From books to feeds: how social media is rewiring students attention

Abstract

Technology, crucial for industrial and educational development, became essential during the COVID-19 pandemic, ensuring continuous learning. Platforms like YouTube and Google Drive facilitate this by providing easy access to educational videos. Google Drive offers cloud storage and sharing, while YouTube provides streaming, content creation, and monetization options. YouTube's features, such as offline viewing, child safety controls, and notifications, make it a leading educational resource, benefiting both creators and viewers globally. Learning has been revolutionized by digitalization, which has impacted psychological elements including motivation, memory, and attention. Age, experience, and passion all influence the attention span, which is important for learning. Social media educational films have a big impact on viewers' attention spans, which influences their learning. Teachers can better adapt curriculum for more effective learning by researching these effects. The purpose of the study was to determine how 300 high school students' attention spans are impacted by social media. The study using the Social Media Attention Span Assessment Toolkit (SMASAT) found that social media had no discernible effect on pupils' attention spans, regardless of their gender, age, residence, or father's occupation. These results are sceptical of earlier theories on the connection between social media use and attention span in learning environments.