Kids can pay attention -- but they prefer their phones

Students can't pay attention in class, teachers complain. Some worry that digital devices are "rewiring" children's brains. The evidence that technology use is eroding attention spans is weak, writes cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham in AFT's American Educator. He hypothesizes that "children still can pay attention, but they choose not to."

Digital devices offer instant gratification and entertainment, writes Willingham. Schoolwork is not always fun, and rewards come much later. Research suggests "digital entertainment has made children quicker to conclude that they are bored."

If he's right, then distractibility is learned behavior than it can be unlearned, he writes. "We might hope that cellphone bans in school would induce such learning, and one would predict that students would learn it more quickly with bell-to-bell bans (rather than allowing phones between classes and at lunch and recess) because they would develop a consistent association between school and no phone."

Willingham explains what the research shows -- and doesn't show -- but you'll need an attention span to read the whole article.