When a student is focused on a lesson that their professor is teaching and automatically becomes distracted by the student sitting next to them, giggling at a phone screen, it throws away all concentration.
Internet access within classrooms draws students’ attention away from the lecture given by their professors and directs it to their phone screens instead. Professors might as well teach their lessons to dogs since they would pay more attention than addicted tweeters and instagrammers.
The few times that I’ve brought my laptop to class and had it on my desk specifically to take notes, I got bored and ended up checking my email and logging into my Instagram and Twitter accounts because of the free internet access available to me in class.
If students didn’t have access to Wi-Fi in class, they couldn’t disrupt themselves and others.
Along with the distraction internet access can pose to students, it also opens a door to cheating.
According to the U.S. News article, “One Third of Teens Use Cellphones to Cheat in School,” author Zach Miners wrote about the findings of a poll that was given to students regarding the amount of students who have cheated at their school. The poll found that one third of teens in school use their cell phones to cheat with the help of internet access.
“Two thirds of responders to the poll–which surveyed 1,013 teens in late May and early June– say others in their school have cheated with cell phones. More than half admit to using the internet to cheat,” Miners wrote.
Thanks to internet access and phones, it is beyond easy to cheat in class. Students can cut and paste text from online papers and use them in their own in class papers, go on Quizlet for answers to a quiz they are about to take and can look up any form of information needed for any subject. Internet access takes the job away from professors, which is to teach and inform.
Cellphones are already bad enough with wireless internet access, but if a school gives free internet access to students, it only speeds up the process of being able to google a Quizlet before a pop quiz. Free internet access in classrooms fuels the inclination to cheat.
Students should turn off their phones, leave their laptops at home and pay attention to their professor’s lectures. Internet access is a disturbance to those who use it.