The door is left open. People chatter in the hallway. Someone gets up to leave. The girl next to you checks her newsfeed. It’s raining outside. You wonder what is being served for lunch today.

This is just a small list of the thousands of distractions that students experience day-to-day in the college setting. The door being left open is a common distraction. But the hidden distractions that I want to discuss, they are more obvious than you may think.

Phones! Laptops! Tablets! Oh my!

Phones! Laptops! Tablets! Oh my!

As humans, we are creatures of not only habit but we need to feel that we belong. I’ve seen students watch other students check their phones for messages and updates, and then seconds later they are reaching for their phones. It is incredibly distracting when the class you are in is not keeping your attention.

When a student opens their laptop in class, maybe they will take notes. But they also have thousands of other options, thousands of other distractions. They can read the news, watch a movie, scroll through Facebook, or do almost anything other than pay attention to the professor. The problem here is, the student behind them is going to want to do the same thing, and so on and so on. Thus, the distracting classroom becomes an enterprise.

Classrooms are meant to be the opposite of distracting, right? Well that is no longer the case in 2016. Each class that I step into, I am prepared to be distracted. But I am also prepared to do my best to not be distracted.

There are other pieces of this puzzle that lead us to using our phones and laptops inappropriately during class time. For instance, if a professor says that he will upload these notes to an online portal or website, then students are less likely to sit and take down the notes, which also come with added verbal points and cues from the professor – which sometimes are very important! I’ve seen this happen so many times and I am no stranger to this myself, I am a culprit of just waiting for the notes to be uploaded.

The problem with this entire situation is that college students have lost the ability to focus on anything besides social media, videos, text messages, and Tweets. Therefore, students are left to teach themselves the material which is not necessary and not ideal.

The classroom has become more distracting than what's going on outside of the classroom. Students are stuck in cellphones and laptops instead of books and notes. Does this need to change? Maybe not, but it definitely is changing the way students learn.