Any type of notification prompts most people to pick up their phones. Popular apps such as Snapchat, Tiktok, and Instagram can be enticing. They can make hours fly by and feel like it’s only been a few minutes. For many virtual students attending Solon High School (SHS), it has become increasingly difficult to focus in class. Due to the distraction of phones present, some students are losing sight of everything they need to get done.  With the start time changing from 8 a.m. to 7:50 a.m. and concluding at 2:50 p.m., it is a long period of time where students are not allowed to be on their phones. 

Everyone is handling online school in a different way, for some, it has become a lot easier to focus and get things done. Some may lack motivation and struggle with procrastination, but this can be due to staring at a screen, making many not want to get anything done. Sitting in one place and having to focus on a little person on a screen is a challenge.

“I constantly find myself playing games or going on Snapchat,” Leyla Torres, a sophomore at SHS said.“ I never feel like I’m focusing or learning anything anymore.”

Many students such as Torres find it difficult to continue to listen to teachers when they have so many distractions around them. Seeing their phone and continuously getting notifications causes their heads to turn and their train of thought to disappear. 

Kids are also finding ways of hiding their phones and other distractions from being visible when they’re in class. Making it increasingly harder for teachers to be able to grab their students’ attention when they’ve already succumbed to their distractions. 

“It’s harder for me to see if students have their phone out,” Math Teacher at Solon High School, John Dingman, said. “Especially with everybody [tilting up] their computers and that’s all I see.” 

Students had the option to go back to in-person learning recently. Those that decided to stay in school for this semester noticed how much easier it is to focus in class due to the absence of their phones. While students are prohibited from using phones, some think they may be missing something on their social media. But, at the same time, it’s helping their ability to concentrate.

“Phones have been a part of that problem for a couple of years now,” Dingman said. “But when I had kids in my class I would always ask them to put their phones in their backpack and put their backpacks in the back of the room.” 

According to Dingman, he also believes that it may not just be phones that are posing a distraction for students. It may be things such as other computers, video games, or even a family member walking through the house talking to them. 

Whether students are home or in-school, screen times can still be pretty high. At home, students have a significantly higher screen time due to the amount of availability. When asked,  Hnottavange had a screen time of around 11 hours, while Brush’s was around seven hours. At home students have more access, allowing their screen time to spike throughout the day. 

According to Hnottavange, she sometimes lacks motivation from staring at a computer, but she is still trying to do something that works for her to learn efficiently. It is easier for her to just go on her phone, but she knows what she has to do, which is something that some students may lack. 

With this lowered amount of motivation, some students have seen their grades be negatively impacted. Many students are still trying to find what way of learning works for them and some of their grades in Powerschool are seeing a change that may not be for the better. Grades are something that are important to most high school students, and it may not necessarily be the course load impacting those scores. 

According to Torres, her grades have been suffering a lot this year compared to last year. She notices how her concentration at home has gone down because of her phone. Anxiety about COVID-19 combined with being told to stay home by her mom, concentration hasn’t been on her side.

“My mom wanted me to stay home because of the whole outbreak, but it is so hard for me to not check my phone during class,” Torres said. “At school, it was already hard to focus, but now that I’m home, every time my phone lights up, I always feel like I’m obligated to check it.”

Learning at home rather than at school has been described as “challenging” and “difficult” by both Hnottavange and Torres. While both of them are opting out and being fully virtual,  Brush still understands the struggle of being online. Which is due to the whole school being virtual every Friday. He finds it a lot harder to learn at home versus at school. 

“I can barely focus while I am in my house because the things around me always catch my attention more than my classes,” Brush said. “At school, I can at least be forced to look at the teacher so they won’t call me out for not listening.”

Being at home also encourages many students to feel the need to share homework answers. It is easy to miss details throughout class because of their distractions around the house. All three students agree that once they realize that they had homework due for a class period, they struggle to get work done last minute before they earn a zero on the assignment. 

“When I was online for school I never did any of my work and my grades were really bad,” Senior Max Brush said. “Being back in school has kind of forced me to do something to fix that.” 

Each school day brings on a skew of homework assignments put onto each student. After more than seven hours of looking at a computer screen, teachers assign even more work to do in the students’ free time. According to Torres, she has a hard time working through her homework later in the evening since she is sick of sitting and staring at a screen.

“After school, my eyes hurt from staring at a screen, my back hurts from sitting all day, and the last thing I want to do is do more work sitting in front of a screen,” Torres said. “It’s so hard for me to motivate myself to start and finish all of my work that I end up procrastinating and pushing everything off, and I end up with zeroes in PowerSchool and a lot of missing assignments.”

Not being in a classroom can be tough on all students, but it isn’t just difficult for them. COVID-19 has impacted the way almost every teacher teaches. Having to find a way to engage everyone and still help them learn can be challenging. Making it especially hard on the teachers. 

“I do think there are some that are negatively impacted,” Dingman said. “It’s harder for me to just sit and look at a computer screen all day.”

Both students and teachers can be struggling with looking at screens all day and still having motivation to get stuff done. COVID-19 has definitely impacted the amount of concentration, but these changes have completely shifted the way students learn now. 

“The loss of structure of being in a classroom has potentially negatively impacted learning,” Dingmand said. 

There are things that need to still be done to limit the distractions of phones, additional computers, game consoles, family members, and so many other things. Those distractions need to fix not only at home, but in the classroom as well. Although it may be difficult to fix, there are still many solutions that can be done to lower those distractions a tiny bit. Some may be harder than others though due to COVID-19 keeping most kids at home. 

Both options in the hybrid learning model can have its ups and downs and each student sees all sides of the struggle on how their phone impacts their concentration. While each student may have a different outlook on how they feel about their ability to concentrate, they still understand how phones have become a big problem when it comes to getting things done. 

“It can be kind of hard to put my phone down,” Torres said. “But there are definitely many things I could be doing to fix this issue.”