Your students are scrolling. Right now, someone in your class is checking their phone while you’re mid-sentence. You know it. They know you know it. And yet here we are, pretending that if we just try hard enough, we can out-compete the entire internet.
Google “how to manage digital device use in a classroom,” and you’ll find a thousand articles promising solutions. Most of them are lying to you. Not on purpose, maybe, but they’re still lying.
The top three myths about digital devices in the classroom are setting teachers up to fail. So let’s talk about what’s real.
Myth #1: There’s a secret to getting students to pay attention to your class instead of their phones.
There isn’t.
People are addicted to their devices. That’s not hyperbole, it’s a meme, it’s a cat video, it’s what their best friend said about someone’s recent breakup. It’s operant conditioning on steroids, that instant gratification delivered directly to a chunk of plastic in your hand. Your students aren’t checking their phones because your lesson is boring. They’re checking because their brains have been rewired to crave that dopamine hit.
You can find strategies that work for a while. Maybe you’ll get a few weeks of better focus. But it won’t last, because you’re not just competing with one distraction. You’re competing with everything their friends are saying, every meme, every notification, every piece of content designed by teams of engineers whose entire job is to keep people glued to screens.
You’re offering education. They’re offering engineered addiction. It’s not a fair fight.
Myth #2: If your lessons are engaging enough, students will ignore their devices.
No, they won’t.
Look, I’ve seen students flip between social media and Kahoot, a Kahoot reviewing them for a test they wanted to pass, with questions that made them laugh out loud. They were engaged and having fun, and yet they were STILL checking their notifications.
Those smug articles telling you to “just be more interesting”? They were written by people who tried something new, got temporary success, and assumed they’d cracked the code. I get it. I’ve been there too. You try a new strategy, it works for a hot minute, and you think, “Finally! Things will be different now!”
They won’t be. They never are, not for long.
Stop beating yourself up for not being more entertaining than the sum total of human creativity available at your students’ fingertips. That’s not a reasonable expectation, and it’s not your job.
Myth #3: Teachers should incorporate digital devices into lessons because devices aren’t going anywhere.
Yeah, right. This is the “if you can’t beat them, join them” argument, and it misses the point entirely.
Yes, you can use devices as part of learning. Sometimes it makes sense. But incorporating phones into your lesson doesn’t mean you suddenly have your students’ full attention. They’re still getting notifications. They’re still scrolling. They’re still doing five things at once, and your carefully designed digital activity is just one more tab in their mental browser.
I’m not saying don’t use devices when it serves your teaching goals. I’m saying don’t fool yourself into thinking that using them will solve the distraction problem. It won’t.
So what’s the answer?
Here’s the thing: there isn’t one magic answer. But don’t click away because there are some things you can do that are actually realistic.
Stop trying to out-compete the internet. You can’t…nobody can. Accept that your students will be distracted sometimes, and design your lessons around that reality instead of against it.
Set boundaries that you can enforce. If your administration supports a no-phones policy, great. Use it. If they don’t, figure out what boundaries you CAN enforce in your classroom and stick to those. Maybe it’s “phones away during direct instruction” or “one warning, then you sit in the front row.” Whatever works for your context.
Focus on what you can control. You can’t control their dopamine responses. You can control your lesson structure. Build in movement. Break things into shorter chunks. Use pair work so they’re accountable to another human, not just to you.
Give up on perfect attention. Perfect attention is dead. It died somewhere between smartphones and social media, and it’s not coming back. That doesn’t mean learning is impossible. It just means it looks different now.
Don’t martyr yourself over this. If you’re spending hours designing elaborate lessons to compete with whatever social media app is hot now, STOP. That’s not sustainable, and it’s not working anyway. Do your job well, set reasonable boundaries, and let go of the idea that you need to be a digital circus to be a good teacher.
This is the unpretty reality we’re working with…
We’re in the middle of a massive shift in how humans process information, communicate, and focus. It’s uncomfortable and frustrating. And yeah, sometimes it’s scary to think about a generation that can’t sit with their own thoughts for five minutes.
But our students didn’t ask for this any more than we did. The younger ones grew up this way. For them, being constantly connected isn’t a choice because it’s their normal. Expecting them to suddenly develop pre-smartphone attention spans because they walked into your classroom is like expecting fish to breathe air or ride a bicycle.
That doesn’t mean we give up. It means we adapt.
Teaching has always been about meeting students where they are, not where we wish they were. Right now, they’re partially present and partially online, and that’s the reality we’re teaching in.
So set your boundaries. Design for shorter attention spans. And for the love of everything, stop blaming yourself for not being more interesting than the internet.
You’re doing fine.
Read more about teaching adult ESL!
- Teachers: Stop Martyring Yourselves!
- The Profound Impact of Reflective Writing in the Adult ESL Classroom
- Discover Two Ideas for Cultivating Insightful Discussion Questions for ESL
Want to talk about this topic with your students? Check out my Texting Discussion Topic Cards.
