How to address students’ low concentration in the digital age

In a world dominated by infinite scrolling on TikTok, videos under one minute long, and hundreds of Instagram stories, our ability to concentrate has drastically decreased. Numerous studies in scientific literature agree that teenagers are among the most affected. For this reason, in this post we will explore strategies to address students’ low concentration in the digital age.

And if you work teaching young people or teenagers, you’ve surely noticed that they find it harder to concentrate and tend to get distracted more easily. It’s not you — it’s their reduced ability to focus, and here we explain everything you need to know to deal with it successfully.

Lower students’ concentration capacity: factors that explain it

In recent years, you’ve surely noticed that students’ ability to concentrate has drastically decreased. Before looking at strategies to maintain students’ focus, let’s examine some of the causes and factors behind this decline:

• Early digitalization and digital overstimulation: The study Does the Brain Drain Effect Really Exist? A Meta-Analysis confirms the so-called brain drain effect, according to which the mere presence of a smartphone already reduces both attention and memory performance. Similar conclusions are drawn in the study Impacto del tiempo de pantalla en la salud de niños y adolescentes (Impact of Screen Time on the Health of Children and Adolescents), which emphasizes that early exposure to technology among children and teenagers, often beginning between 12 and 24 months, also plays a role. This, combined with the large number of hours they spend in front of screens without supervision, means they consume a lot of fragmented and overstimulating content. For example: Instagram stories that last only a few seconds, TikTok videos under a minute, photos that can be scrolled through in a second, etc. This type of short, fragmented content leads to less cognitive control and problems maintaining concentration (see study). 

• Lack of sleep: In the same study on screen time, emphasis is placed on how screen use in bedrooms negatively affects sleep, impacting up to 30% of children and adolescents. Lack of sleep causes greater daytime fatigue, which in turn leads to a reduced concentration capacity in students.

• Neurobiological factors: Sometimes, reduced concentration isn’t caused by the environment but by neurobiological factors, such as ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). According to the Spanish Society of Outpatient Pediatrics and Primary Care, between 4.9% and 8.8% of Spanish children and teenagers have ADHD; in Germany, according to Schlack et al. (2007) 4,8% of children and adolescents have been diagnosed.

• Emotional and psychological factors: Anxiety, stress and academic pressure can trigger attention deficits in students. It is important to have tools to detect this and address it early.

• Lack of self-regulation: If students aren’t taught self-control and self-regulation, it is difficult for them to sustain attention. Additionally, multitasking is very common, which divides their attention and prevents them from fully focusing on a single activity.

There are more factors, but in this article we focus on the ones above.

Two children using screens. Image by Freepik

How does reduced concentration affect academic performance?

Numerous studies have confirmed that low concentration capacity is directly linked to reduced learning and poorer knowledge retention.

According to the study Proceso de la atención y su implicación en el proceso de aprendizaje (Attention Processes and Their Implications in the Learning Process), attention has several key characteristics, without which effective learning is not possible: 

• There must be the ability to select/focus on important stimuli while ignoring distractions.

• There must be stability, meaning the ability to maintain attention over long periods.

• There must be the ability to shift from one focus of attention to another without losing performance.

• There must be self-regulation so that attention does not deplete but can be sustained for a long time.

What happens if one of these characteristics fails? Our students have lower concentration capacity because they are unable to focus their attention in class.

Some consequences of lack of attention in academic development include:

• Students are unable to fix their attention on important content because they get distracted easily, making it difficult to deeply understand and retain content.

• In long tasks (such as reading or reasoning), students may give up early, complete tasks in a superficial or fragmented way, or fail to retain the information derived from them. This may also lead to more errors.

• Even if students study or complete tasks, if they do so without concentrating on learning, their performance will be lower.

• When students realise it takes them longer to study or complete activities, they may become frustrated, even developing thoughts like “I’m not good at this” or experiencing a decline in motivation.

An irritated young student at class. Image by Freepik

Teaching strategies to maintain students’ concentration in the digital age

After reading all this, you might think it’s difficult for students to retain learning nowadays. But it doesn’t have to be: there are many strategies you can apply as a teacher to ensure they stay focused in your classes. Here are some ideas:

Task fragmentation

You already know that the fast pace of social media has shortened students’ attention spans. But what can you do as a teacher to prevent this from reducing learning? One idea is to break tasks and activities into small, achievable goals. This means dividing long activities into several steps, allowing students to work through small chunks.

Microlearning

Microlearning is a methodology designed to address short attention spans and make better use of limited student focus. It consists of offering short learning capsules focused on a very specific topic.

This method allows students to focus on one idea at a time, making use of their attention peaks (around 15 minutes) and increasing knowledge retention.

How is this applied in practice? Instead of offering a long 40-minute explanation, you give shorter, targeted explanations, such as 5-minute ones. After each explanation, you can propose an activity to apply it, followed by videos, audio clips or readings that reinforce the concept. And so on with the rest of the topics.

A teacher and a student at class. Image by Drazen Zigic on Freepik

Frequent student participation

Another way to maintain concentration is to introduce participatory approaches throughout your lessons. That is, during a class explanation you can encourage students’ participation so communication is not one-directional.

Challenge-Based Learning (CBL)

Within active methodologies, Challenge-Based Learning (CBL) is an excellent way to address students’ low concentration.

With CBL, you pose a challenge to your students so they have a goal to achieve, engaging them emotionally. This moves away from traditional teaching, as students discover concepts themselves and apply them in practice.

If you want to introduce CBL, create learning units where you clearly explain what the challenge will consist of, its phases, how students should work, and so on.

Visual Thinking

Another strategy we suggest to maintain attention is applying Visual Thinking. This involves using visual tools to express ideas, organize information and communicate concepts clearly and understandably. This methodology helps teachers in their teaching process as well as students in their learning process.

You can apply visual thinking with physical materials (post-its, cardboards, whiteboards…) or digital ones (concept maps, for example).