Students Haven’t Lost Focus. They’ve Lost the Reason to Care.

The Myth of the Shrinking Attention Span and Reclaiming Student Focus 

The narrative is familiar by now: today’s kids are dopamine-craving zombies, unable to look up from TikTok or Fortnite long enough to do their schoolwork. The constant inundation of technology, media, and social media has shrunken the modern child's attention span. As a result, nearly half of U.S. states have banned cell phones in schools, worried that they rob attention from schoolwork. Teachers everywhere describe students who seem distracted, unwilling and unable to engage.

These points are true, or at least contain some truth. But something doesn’t add up when we blame a shrinking attention span. I led a writing lesson this week that started with me sharing a vulnerable story from when I was in middle school. I mixed in a few funny moments, but I also bared a bit of my soul. Once I had them hooked, we shifted into structure and the lesson turned more academic. For the last twenty minutes of class, I asked them to write about a formative moment from their own lives using the discussed structure. 

I didn’t witness that famed drop-in-attention-span. These students were locked in the whole time, and I think that’s because of what they were asked to focus on. Starting off this lesson with a story and some vulnerability won investment from the students. They were able to make the connection between real life and the content we’d cover. When we transitioned to writing about themselves, the engagement followed. They wanted to engage with this content.

Relevance promoted focus. When students cared, they engaged. When they didn’t, their attention slipped.

What the Research Actually Says

Now you might say, “I used to teach content that wasn’t always relevant or personal, but students stayed on task despite that. Kids have changed.”

That might be partially true. Student focus in school may have shifted, but this is not due to a change in students or their attention spans. A 31-year study of 179 reports using the d2 Test of Attention (a common test for attention span) found little, if any, decline in students’ attention spans. Kids in 1990 had about the same attention span as kids do today. Technology has changed. School has changed. The world itself has changed. But children’s ability to focus has not.

The Real Issue: Motivation, Not Attention

What has changed is the motivation to stay focused. 

There is a relevance gap between students and school. Thirty years ago, there was a clearer purpose for school. For one, that’s where students went for information. Want to learn about the Amazon Rainforest? Learn it in school. Looking for a novel? Go to the school library. Want to learn how to play an instrument? We have a band class for that. 

Now, the information of the world is at our students’ fingertips and that type of access is a click away. So they ask: Why sit in a classroom five days a week for information I can find on my phone?

Why School Feels Less Relevant

Now, this doesn’t mean they actually have the learning opportunities of school at their fingertips. Of course, they can’t meaningfully learn all of the information offered by educators completely on their own. Guidance and expertise is still essential, but do students know that? Do they understand the value of their education?

In the past, the benefit of an education was much clearer to students. They knew that engaging in school equals more success in life. 

Success in elementary school leads to success in middle school, which leads to success in high school which leads to success in college which promises a successful career. 

This path is no longer guaranteed. College no longer guarantees prosperity. With rising tuition, student debt, and underemployment of college grads, getting a diploma has made the payoff less certain in students’ eyes. And yet so much of k-12 education is oriented toward getting that diploma. For many students, the promise of a successful life because of their education does not grab students’ focus as much as many other things vying for their attention.

The “Why” Generation

Cell phones, video games, and a constant barrage of media are stealing students’ focus. However, it's not because students are incapable of focusing. It’s that for many students, school has not made a strong enough case to steal it back. 

“Why put in the effort of writing a research paper when no one can explain to me why I need to know how to write research papers?”

“Why should I give another two hours of my life to homework when I don’t know why I’m learning math in the first place?”

“Why would I stop using my phone in class when I’ve already decided I don’t want to go to college?”

Helping Students See the Point

These are the questions students are asking, and I think they’re valid ones to ask. I also think each of them have valid answers. Of course there’s still value in research papers and math class, and explaining that value should be a regular task for educators. We need to articulate the purpose of student-work. Brene Brown recently said in an interview with the New York Times, “What I’ve noticed about this generation: They’re not doing anything without the “why.” Why are we doing it that way? Why is that gonna be helpful?”

This is obviously frustrating for many educators. Having to justify lessons and tasks was not the norm for most educators in the past. The expectation was ‘you do the work because I said so and because that’s what you do between the ages of 5 and 18.’ 

However, providing justification is the reality. But again, it’s not a flaw in the students; it’s a result of the world they grew up in. From a distrust in institutions that fail in their promises, to the constant bombardment of stimuli today’s students have grown up with. With so many things competing for their eyes, anything that tries to pull them away from that is to be questioned. 

Perhaps this will lead to better critical thinking in this generation, but also a generation of students who will not jump just because their teacher said so. Will not write just because there’s a gradebook. Will not work just because they are in school. 

So what do we do?

Putting Purpose Into Practice

If we want students to focus and give the attention we know they are capable of to their education, everything taught needs to be run through a purpose-filter. 

1. What is the purpose of what I’m teaching?
2. How can I make the tasks I assign more purposeful?

For number one, if we cannot answer that question, if we can’t articulate why a piece of content or its corresponding assignment has value, then I’m not sure why it belongs in the classroom. For instance, I used to teach grammar by having students diagram sentences. They dreaded those lessons, especially as they knew it would be the only place in their entire lives that they would ever have to diagram a sentence. If a student asked me why they have to draw slanted lines for modifiers, my only reasonable answer was: "Because it will be on the quiz."

Then a veteran teacher gave me a book to read, Grammar Matters: Lessons, Tips, & Conversations Using Mentor Texts. It is about teaching grammar in context and helping students learn syntax while in the act of writing something they enjoy. 

So I changed up my grammar instruction and all of a sudden there was a massive engagement shift. My reason for teaching with diagrams is because that is what I knew, not because it was necessarily a best practice. When it became clear that there were better, more meaningful ways, students responded. They could see the value of the learning. 

Making Learning Units More Meaningful

For number 2, How can I make the tasks I assign more purposeful?, it’s about considering the intrinsic and extrinsic rewards within a task. Plenty of research shows that when there is a higher level purpose to a task, there is a measurable benefit to a students’ engagement. This is true across grade levels and content areas. This is why methodologies like project-based learning are so important. 

The University of Southern California conducted a research study showing even students in AP classes score higher on the AP exam when their learning was conducted in a project-based learning environment. When students know their work is contributing to something bigger than themselves, they give more attention to it. 

In a typical AP Literature classroom studying The Catcher in the Rye, the routine often looks like this: students read a chapter, the teacher delivers a lecture on theme, the class engages in discussion, students complete a short literary analysis, and then take a quiz. The next day, they move on to the following chapter and repeat the process. The primary objective of this sequence would be for students to learn the material well enough to remember the content and perform that same type of literary analysis well enough to do it again on the AP exam at the end of the year. 

There is nothing inherently wrong with this sequence, but as soon as students stop caring about the test, everything else falls apart. 

Now what if the teacher of that class told students at the beginning of the unit that the novel they are about to read is one of the most consistently banned books in American history, and that as they study, they will be deciding if the banning is appropriate or not. Then they will write an op-ed to be submitted to a major publication arguing for or against these types of book-bans?

This task still teaches literary analysis, only now there is a defined purpose for it. There is now an audience for student-work as well as the potential for them to make an impact in the world with what they are learning in school. 

That is something worth giving your attention to. 

Where We Go From Here

The world has changed, technology has become more powerful, society has become more distracting, and all of this is competing for the attention of young minds. And the ramifications of this is obvious in schools. Does this mean school needs a complete transformation? A total departure from how things have always been done? Or do we just throw up our hands and declare phones and video games as champions of students' attention?

No!

Our job is to show students why their education is worth the effort. We must articulate the value of each task, discard the work that lacks it, and design more with meaning. Students can still focus, we just have to give them something worth their attention.

Project-Based Learning is not just for "PBL Teachers." Learn how to incorporate it into your school and classroom at epicpbl.com