In many classrooms, a teacher can look around and see students checking their cellphones over and over again. Although a teacher can take this personally, the bigger problem is that the student is not giving the teacher and the lesson her full attention. Instead of engaging in deep thought, the cellphone-obsessed student is preventing herself from thinking deeply about an issue.
Much of learning is about exchanging ideas with others. Even the attentive student is missing out when his classmates fiddle with their mobile phones. According to an article by James E. Katz at Rutgers University, a survey of 20-year-old information technology students revealed that 41 percent of the students involved had checked their messages the previous week, 34 percent had played with their phones because they were bored in class, 29 percent had answered a call and 23 percent spoke with a friend -- all during class. Instead of thinking about class, a significant percentage of students are thinking about their personal lives and engaging in behavior that distracts others.
Many environments are filled with background sounds, and this general din minimizes the distraction that is caused by a single sound. When you go to a restaurant, for example, there may be music playing, people around you talking and silverware scraping against plates. During a classroom lecture, however, attention is generally focused on the teacher or a student who is asking a question. As Scott Campbell pointed out in a July 2006 article in the journal "Communication Education," a ringing cellphone usually has no competition as background noise, magnifying the attention it gets and the disruption it causes.
As McGraw-Hill's Teaching Today points out, mobile phones make it possible for students to send each other answers during tests or quizzes. While most students play with their phones in a very obvious way, it certainly is possible for a pair or group of students to be discreet enough to communicate. Further, these small digital devices can hold and display cheat sheets. In the past, students used to write answers on their hands. Now they can scroll through unlimited text.
The National Crime Prevention Council points out that cellphones -- particularly models that allow access to social-networking, email and other applications -- are sometimes used for cyberbullying. Cellphones allow bullies to send unpleasant messages all day long, disrupting their educational progress as well as that of the recipients of such messages. Victims of cyberbullying can block these unfriendly users from these applications, but this requires concentration and effort that would better be applied to schoolwork.