When River Hill High School 10th-grader Kelsey Balimtas sits down to do her homework, her cell phone and computer are always right in front of her. She would like to stay completely focused on the textbook, but honestly, she says, she just can't.
Her cell phone calls to her with an irresistible buzz she can't ignore. She bounces from homework to text message to Facebook and back to homework. "I think the quality of my homework is decreased," she admitted.
And so do college professors and high school teachers, who say this constantly plugged-in generation is less able to focus on subjects that take deep concentration. They see students who are smart but can't write long papers very well; students who have more trouble paying attention in longer class periods and students who are disorganized. Their observations are supported by more than just anecdotes from the classroom; brain research shows that it is difficult to do many things at the same time.
"They are constantly jumping from one thing to another. They can't sit still long enough," said Ilona McGuiness, dean of first-year students and academic services at Loyola College. "You can't think through problems. You can't process. You can't develop the deep thinking skills."
Such is the life of the normal high school and college student these days, a generation that doesn't remember when the "house phone" was simply the only phone or when research was done at the library.
They are always plugged in to some form of technology: an iPod, a computer, a cell phone or a BlackBerry - and sometimes all of them at once.
In that way, Balimtas is a normal high school student except that she is mature enough to realize that she may not be as efficient when she is plugged into all her devices at once. That hasn't changed her behavior or that of her friends, who admit to having a love affair with their gadgets.
"If my phone breaks for a couple of days, I begin to feel weird," said Theresa Russell, a ninth-grader at the Howard County school.
"My girlfriend goes to this school, and we text 50 times a day," said Matthew Moore, a 10th-grader who stopped momentarily during an interview to check his phone and see who had just sent him a text message. Moore and other students say they are so used to sending messages on their phones that they prefer it to speaking to friends on the phone because it takes less time.
