The Attention Economy Has Entered the Classroom
Most teachers recognise the moment. You've introduced a lesson, explained the task and given students everything they need to begin. Yet within minutes, someone is checking another tab, a notification appears on a screen, and a few students seem more interested in what's happening elsewhere than in the activity in front of them. The attention economy has entered the classroom!
Distraction isn't new, of course. Students have always looked out of windows, passed notes and found creative ways to avoid difficult tasks. What's different today is the scale and sophistication of the competition. For teachers, this creates an interesting challenge. How do we help students develop sustained attention in a world where so many technologies encourage them to divide it?
The Attention Economy Has Entered the Classroom
The attention economy is built around a relatively simple principle: human attention is valuable, and digital platforms compete to capture and retain it. Social media feeds, video platforms and mobile applications use notifications, recommendations and personalised content to encourage continued engagement.
Classrooms operate differently. Meaningful learning frequently requires students to concentrate on a single problem, revisit an unfamiliar concept or persevere when progress feels slow. These activities don't always provide the immediate satisfaction students may experience through digital entertainment.
Research suggests that digital distraction is already a significant classroom issue. According to the OECD's PISA 2022 results, approximately 30% of students across OECD countries reported becoming distracted by digital devices during most or every mathematics lesson. Around one-quarter also reported being distracted by other students using devices.
Interestingly, students reporting frequent digital distraction also tended to perform less well in mathematics, although these associations do not establish that technology alone caused lower achievement. Nevertheless, the findings highlight how difficult it can be to maintain a focused learning environment when competing digital activities are readily available.
Why Multitasking Makes Learning Harder
Students sometimes appear remarkably comfortable moving between activities. They might listen to a teacher, type notes, respond to messages and browse another website within a few minutes. Yet being accustomed to switching tasks doesn't necessarily mean doing so is effective for learning.
A study by Sana, Weston and Cepeda (2013), published in Computers & Education, examined laptop multitasking during a simulated university lecture. Students who multitasked performed worse on a subsequent comprehension test than those who remained focused. Perhaps more surprisingly, students sitting near multitasking peers also experienced reduced comprehension.
Although the experiment involved university students rather than schoolchildren, it illustrates an important principle: distractions can affect both the individual using a device and the learning environment around them.
Another study by Ward and colleagues (2017) found that simply having one's smartphone nearby could reduce available cognitive capacity during certain tasks, even when participants resisted checking it. While these findings shouldn't be interpreted as evidence that every device inevitably damages concentration, they suggest that managing attention may require more than asking students to ignore distractions.
Are Phone Bans the Answer?
One response has been to remove smartphones from classrooms altogether. Schools and governments increasingly see restrictions as a way to reduce interruptions and establish clearer expectations around learning.
A 2025 study examined smartphone policies across 30 secondary schools in England. Researchers found that restrictive policies were associated with reduced phone and social media use during school hours, but not with better overall mental wellbeing or lower total phone use across the week.
These findings don't establish that classroom phone restrictions are ineffective. The study was observational, and reducing interruptions during lessons remains a legitimate educational objective. However, they do suggest that removing devices at school may not be sufficient to address the wider digital habits influencing students' lives.
There's also an important distinction between recreational screen use and purposeful educational technology. Digital simulations, accessibility tools and collaborative platforms can support learning when used appropriately. The question shouldn't simply be whether screens belong in classrooms, but whether a particular technology contributes enough educational value to justify the attention it demands.
Back in the Classroom: Helping Students Build Attention
If distraction is becoming a more persistent challenge, teachers need approaches that are realistic rather than another collection of complicated classroom rules.
One starting point is creating clear boundaries between digital and non-digital activities. Students might use devices for research or a simulation, then close them during discussion, independent writing or reflection. This reduces unnecessary competition for attention without abandoning useful technology.
Lesson structure matters too. Clear instructions, manageable stages and regular opportunities to check understanding can help students remain oriented towards the learning objective. Teachers might also experiment with short periods of focused independent work followed by discussion or feedback, gradually increasing the demands on students' concentration where appropriate.
Importantly, attention can be supported through teaching students how to manage their own learning. The Education Endowment Foundation's guidance on metacognition and self-regulation emphasises helping learners plan, monitor and evaluate their approaches to tasks. These strategies can provide a useful foundation for discussing how students recognise distraction and return their attention to learning.
None of these approaches guarantees a perfectly focused classroom. Students differ in their needs, and concentration is influenced by many factors beyond technology, including task difficulty, motivation and the learning environment. The aim is to create conditions that support attention rather than expecting students to demonstrate unlimited self-control.
The attention economy presents education with a challenge that extends beyond smartphones and classroom management. Students increasingly navigate environments where information is immediate, entertainment is personalised and switching between activities requires very little effort.
Technology isn't inherently the enemy of concentration. Used thoughtfully, it can make difficult ideas accessible, provide useful feedback and create opportunities that traditional resources cannot. But its presence should always serve a clear educational purpose.
Perhaps the most useful shift is to stop treating attention solely as something teachers must capture and start recognising it as something students need opportunities to practise and manage.
After all, preparing students for a digital world shouldn't simply mean giving them more technology. It should also mean helping them decide when to put it aside.
In a world designed to compete for students' attention, how can we create classrooms that help them develop the confidence and independence to manage their own focus? Let us know in the comments below.
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