HEART learning challenge: Attention and Digital Distractions

 

Distracted reading is caused by many things, including social media.

Image from Vassar.

Within the article Learning In The Age of Digital Distraction, the author discusses how the human brain stores information and different things that can impact memory, including distractions. The author confirmed some things that I previously knew, such as some addictive behaviors (logging on to social media, for example) can have negative consequences when you are trying to focus. While it may seem rewarding at the time, a break from your work through distractions such as social media can negatively impact your ability to retain knowledge or complete your work in general. Something the author discussed that I did not previously know is that people tend to learn and recall things best that are stored in the short term memory; therefore, when you are completing work or studying but you keep getting distracted, a lot of that knowledge is essentially thrown out of the window. You will not retain the knowledge because you are distracted and it did not have enough time to process in your short term memory before you obliged your distractions. The best way to retain knowledge is to ignore the distractions around you. This is something that I did not know before reading this article! One thing I am curious about is how the author said "our success at filtering is critical for our ability to perceive information" (Westervelt, 2016). Basically, by filtering what we know to be distractions versus what we perceive to be important information, we retain what we are learning better. In order for me to act on this curiosity, I am going to try and limit my distractions while working and see if this helps me better retain knowledge in the future! Overall, I thought this article was very well written and I enjoyed reading it.