Ironically, as I was writing a Restack of this post, a popup randomly appeared on my computer asking me if I wanted to enable Siri. I spent the next ten minutes trying figure out to prevent such popups from occurring in the future, to no avail. I then had to go back and try to remember what I was planning to write. So unfortunately, frequent interruptions are baked into the system of how we now work. This affect adults and children alike.
Anecdotally, I've found that task switching is a kind of "notification fatigue" on par with typical alert-style notifications. I've practically eliminated notifications, but still felt a weird kind of stress every day, that resulted in a kind of dull headache in the early evening.
I found a feature in iOS this week: Guided Access. When you enable it, you add friction for task switching. Like, it takes a triple click and unlock code to use a new app.
It's been great, because it gives the phone "a job". During the day, I now dedicate my phone to playing music.
Between this, and disabling notifications, it's completely changed my habits. I no longer just bounce around looking for texts, emails, reddit, etc, during the day. And that... completely removes a ton of sources of focus loss. It's eliminated that daily headache.
It's weird, but giving each screen ONE job at a time has been profound. I've started to do similar things with my computer. Each screen has ONE job. And if I can't dedicate a job for a screen, I turn it off and put it away.
I think this is true for adults and even more relevant for young people in schools. By implementing the traditional structure of school built by bells, fire drills, announcements, short periods, we are unintentionally teaching and reinforcing shallow endurance cycles.
Why invest deeply in a text when the bell will save you?
Why wrestle with the last hard problem when time will rescue you?
It’s definitely true in a lot of work environments, in which email notifications are usually left on and there’s frequently an expectation of quick replies. It’s hard to focus when those become the standard expectations in a workplace.
Great article, very important information. We all know cell phones and other devices can be distracting but the impact is eye opening. We all are impacted when that phone dings, lights up or is missing. We get overwhelmed, that's probably why so many people find the need to take a break from social media; it can be distracting, even in silent mode, as mentioned in the article. I found when I needed to take a break from the computer screen at work, I'd pick up the cell phone and randomly scroll through, mentally exhausted afterwards finding it difficult to return to work on the computer screen. What did I do before cell phones? How did I give myself a mental break? I decided to return to some of those things, to reconnect with my own thoughts and sometimes good ole silence. I purchased a coloring book and pencils. Now when I need a break I color a page, go for a walk, or just close my eyes for a few moments. I am amazed at how difficult this transition has been but loving finding my thoughts again.
Thank you for this thoughtful and nuanced write-up of our work — it’s always encouraging to see research discussed with such care and clarity. I especially appreciate the way you broaden the discussion beyond “screen time” toward the structure and timing of digital interruptions, which is exactly where we believe an important part of the debate should move.
One point I find increasingly relevant is how these findings translate into everyday habits. Since discovering these results, I’ve personally started systematically disabling notifications whenever I need sustained focus on a task. It’s a small behavioral change, but it highlights a broader idea: the goal is probably not to eliminate digital tools, but to redesign our interaction rhythms with them.
More generally, I think this raises interesting questions for educators, designers, and policymakers alike. If the cognitive cost comes less from total exposure and more from repeated micro-interruptions, then interventions should perhaps focus on temporal structuring — protected attention windows, context-aware notifications, or norms around asynchronous communication.
Thanks again for contributing to the conversation and helping bring these ideas to a wider audience.
Thank you for this article and research. 25 years of teaching and I'm not sure what else we can bang on to get parents and legislators' attention of how this is affecting young readers. I teach high school students, and the difference in attention from the start of my career to now is a chasm. This is not because of their attitudes or intelligence which are roughly the same, but in the ability to focus on complex tasks or texts. Some things my school has done to mitigate this:
1. Returned to physical only books in class. (HUGE difference).
2. Tried to create a culture of low tech classrooms. This is tough as all LMS systems require assignments to be uploaded to the LMS, but we've found ways to reduce screens being the primary way a text is read for different subjects.
3. Restrictive software. This has honestly been the biggest fail and biggest expense. We use a system called "Jamf" which is expensive and is supposed to eliminate all notifications and unwanted websites. Anyone who has been in a classroom knows this becomes then the primary time suck of a mousetrap game whereas kids find ways around it and we have to catch them. This also degrades the natural student teacher relationship of trust.
It seems as teachers we are standing looking at an enormous wave coming at us (all AP / SAT / grades / papers are now online) and admin is giving us a lifejacket. Until we have collective pushback against the tech industry as a whole and eliminate 1 to 1 as the dominant form of classroom learning can we start to address the issues so carefully laid out in this article.
The tyrrany of the immediate. We are conditioned to stop real interaction when the notification chimes. Pavlov would be so proud; me, mostly disappointed.
What strikes me most about this study is how notifications have become an entryway for business to develop habits in students and people. There are many business books about habit: 'The Power of Habit', 'The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People', etc. Making money is the focus for these people, so, of course, they don't care about the deleterious effects on learning via attention loss. This makes it a problem that is hard to fix.
This is definitely interesting. It’s important to study these effects, but it’s too late for some kids.
In reality, in a classroom in the UK anyway, there are now no phones in the building. They are locked up on entry.
What distracted my children was poor behaviour from a minority of other children.
Deep focus here is being given some moral status. Or we’re assuming that it is better.
Kids born in 2000 or after only know a life with phones. I’m not sure how novel and fascinating it all is to them. We’re studying the effects after they’ve happened. Like most safeguarding, we’re recording the information after the potential rupture.
There’s so much to this that suggests “the way we lived before” was so much better.
I turned all my notifications off in 2016 probably.
This is an issue for people that can’t put boundaries in for themselves or their children.
Maybe what’s on the phone is more interesting than the dull information being taught in dull ways. Or it’s more entertaining than the dull tasks we’re employed to do.
Thank you Andrew - that’s a very thoughtful thing to say. Means a lot.
I’m starting to see it in the terms you describe. I realised in Covid times that it was essentially a baby sitting service or extended nursery. Especially for “essential workers”. People that kept the profits coming and stopped us all from starving.
It wasn’t that they wanted to educate the masses. . .
I realised at this point that we don’t need hedge fund managers or pr execs or marketing consultants- we needed lorry drivers, health workers, shelf stackers, and clean water.
I do also know that there are benefits to the education system that are probably incidental and secondary - like socialisation and understanding norms.
But the key giveaway is private education. If public education was efficient and effective- why have another tier?
I really like this research, their data & this discussion…
I think this is something that teachers in schools need to learn about, understand & take some action in a way to negate these negative effects?
I’m so sorry - I’m unable to attend your sessions in Sydney or Melbourne as we are travelling at that time!
I wish you well & am sure you will be well received & respected! 👍
I believe that there are many teachers, who have good intentions & who don’t have the time or energy to learn what they need - as they would like to teach more effectively?
As well, much of what’s written isn’t in “plain English” = easy for teachers, parents & other adults ( even grandparents) to read, understand and learn…
In some situations - systems & schools prescribe materials that are NOT evidence-based & teachers have NO choices?
Thanks SO MUCH for all your posts on here - I am learning so much more - extending what I know and am more motivated to continue learning!!
Best wishes, safe travels in Australia 🇦🇺 & please keep posting here & elsewhere!
Your voice & expertise are much needed in today’s educational world 🌍!
What struck me most is the idea that disruption is personal. It isn’t just the visual cue — it’s the possibility that this concerns me. That anticipatory vigilance is exactly what I see in classrooms: even when phones are face down, there’s a hum of divided awareness.
The contagion point is sobering too. A single notification on one desk can ripple across a room. Attention is no longer just an individual discipline; it’s an environmental condition.
As educators, this feels less like a classroom management issue and more like a design question. If attention is “the rarest and purest form of generosity,” then part of our role is to build spaces where that generosity is protected. Not because devices are evil — but because depth cannot coexist with constant recruitment.
Thankfully, one of the best pieces of advice to reduce screen time is also a pretty great solution to have fewer notifications: Delete unnecessary apps from your phone! If an app isn’t there in the first place, the notifications won’t either.
Ironically, as I was writing a Restack of this post, a popup randomly appeared on my computer asking me if I wanted to enable Siri. I spent the next ten minutes trying figure out to prevent such popups from occurring in the future, to no avail. I then had to go back and try to remember what I was planning to write. So unfortunately, frequent interruptions are baked into the system of how we now work. This affect adults and children alike.
Ugh.
Anecdotally, I've found that task switching is a kind of "notification fatigue" on par with typical alert-style notifications. I've practically eliminated notifications, but still felt a weird kind of stress every day, that resulted in a kind of dull headache in the early evening.
I found a feature in iOS this week: Guided Access. When you enable it, you add friction for task switching. Like, it takes a triple click and unlock code to use a new app.
It's been great, because it gives the phone "a job". During the day, I now dedicate my phone to playing music.
Between this, and disabling notifications, it's completely changed my habits. I no longer just bounce around looking for texts, emails, reddit, etc, during the day. And that... completely removes a ton of sources of focus loss. It's eliminated that daily headache.
It's weird, but giving each screen ONE job at a time has been profound. I've started to do similar things with my computer. Each screen has ONE job. And if I can't dedicate a job for a screen, I turn it off and put it away.
I think this is true for adults and even more relevant for young people in schools. By implementing the traditional structure of school built by bells, fire drills, announcements, short periods, we are unintentionally teaching and reinforcing shallow endurance cycles.
Why invest deeply in a text when the bell will save you?
Why wrestle with the last hard problem when time will rescue you?
It’s definitely true in a lot of work environments, in which email notifications are usually left on and there’s frequently an expectation of quick replies. It’s hard to focus when those become the standard expectations in a workplace.
Great article, very important information. We all know cell phones and other devices can be distracting but the impact is eye opening. We all are impacted when that phone dings, lights up or is missing. We get overwhelmed, that's probably why so many people find the need to take a break from social media; it can be distracting, even in silent mode, as mentioned in the article. I found when I needed to take a break from the computer screen at work, I'd pick up the cell phone and randomly scroll through, mentally exhausted afterwards finding it difficult to return to work on the computer screen. What did I do before cell phones? How did I give myself a mental break? I decided to return to some of those things, to reconnect with my own thoughts and sometimes good ole silence. I purchased a coloring book and pencils. Now when I need a break I color a page, go for a walk, or just close my eyes for a few moments. I am amazed at how difficult this transition has been but loving finding my thoughts again.
Thank you for this thoughtful and nuanced write-up of our work — it’s always encouraging to see research discussed with such care and clarity. I especially appreciate the way you broaden the discussion beyond “screen time” toward the structure and timing of digital interruptions, which is exactly where we believe an important part of the debate should move.
One point I find increasingly relevant is how these findings translate into everyday habits. Since discovering these results, I’ve personally started systematically disabling notifications whenever I need sustained focus on a task. It’s a small behavioral change, but it highlights a broader idea: the goal is probably not to eliminate digital tools, but to redesign our interaction rhythms with them.
More generally, I think this raises interesting questions for educators, designers, and policymakers alike. If the cognitive cost comes less from total exposure and more from repeated micro-interruptions, then interventions should perhaps focus on temporal structuring — protected attention windows, context-aware notifications, or norms around asynchronous communication.
Thanks again for contributing to the conversation and helping bring these ideas to a wider audience.
Do you think this is true even without notifications? Does just looking at the phone also cause similar mechanism?
This makes so much sense!
Thank you for this article and research. 25 years of teaching and I'm not sure what else we can bang on to get parents and legislators' attention of how this is affecting young readers. I teach high school students, and the difference in attention from the start of my career to now is a chasm. This is not because of their attitudes or intelligence which are roughly the same, but in the ability to focus on complex tasks or texts. Some things my school has done to mitigate this:
1. Returned to physical only books in class. (HUGE difference).
2. Tried to create a culture of low tech classrooms. This is tough as all LMS systems require assignments to be uploaded to the LMS, but we've found ways to reduce screens being the primary way a text is read for different subjects.
3. Restrictive software. This has honestly been the biggest fail and biggest expense. We use a system called "Jamf" which is expensive and is supposed to eliminate all notifications and unwanted websites. Anyone who has been in a classroom knows this becomes then the primary time suck of a mousetrap game whereas kids find ways around it and we have to catch them. This also degrades the natural student teacher relationship of trust.
It seems as teachers we are standing looking at an enormous wave coming at us (all AP / SAT / grades / papers are now online) and admin is giving us a lifejacket. Until we have collective pushback against the tech industry as a whole and eliminate 1 to 1 as the dominant form of classroom learning can we start to address the issues so carefully laid out in this article.
The tyrrany of the immediate. We are conditioned to stop real interaction when the notification chimes. Pavlov would be so proud; me, mostly disappointed.
Presumably the same mechanisms apply if you work at a laptop and have notifications on from e.g. slack or teams or email?
What strikes me most about this study is how notifications have become an entryway for business to develop habits in students and people. There are many business books about habit: 'The Power of Habit', 'The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People', etc. Making money is the focus for these people, so, of course, they don't care about the deleterious effects on learning via attention loss. This makes it a problem that is hard to fix.
This is definitely interesting. It’s important to study these effects, but it’s too late for some kids.
In reality, in a classroom in the UK anyway, there are now no phones in the building. They are locked up on entry.
What distracted my children was poor behaviour from a minority of other children.
Deep focus here is being given some moral status. Or we’re assuming that it is better.
Kids born in 2000 or after only know a life with phones. I’m not sure how novel and fascinating it all is to them. We’re studying the effects after they’ve happened. Like most safeguarding, we’re recording the information after the potential rupture.
There’s so much to this that suggests “the way we lived before” was so much better.
I turned all my notifications off in 2016 probably.
This is an issue for people that can’t put boundaries in for themselves or their children.
Maybe what’s on the phone is more interesting than the dull information being taught in dull ways. Or it’s more entertaining than the dull tasks we’re employed to do.
Maybe our brains are looking for a way out. . .
I did screech from one subject to another. I like the study of neuroscience on the effects on attention and focus.
I should really just engage in that topic in these replies - and make broader points elsewhere.
I hear what you’re saying, and it makes “too many” notifications sound like a problem for the privileged.
I think schools have already addressed phone usage in the class.
I have 6/7 ACE’s and had cancer at 46 yrs old - it’s correlation and anecdotal, but I take your point seriously.
I hope one government in the future addresses wealth inequality and poverty in our communities and schools.
Maybe they should switch from “education” to basic provisions of physiological needs, self efficacy and belonging?
Thank you Andrew - that’s a very thoughtful thing to say. Means a lot.
I’m starting to see it in the terms you describe. I realised in Covid times that it was essentially a baby sitting service or extended nursery. Especially for “essential workers”. People that kept the profits coming and stopped us all from starving.
It wasn’t that they wanted to educate the masses. . .
I realised at this point that we don’t need hedge fund managers or pr execs or marketing consultants- we needed lorry drivers, health workers, shelf stackers, and clean water.
I do also know that there are benefits to the education system that are probably incidental and secondary - like socialisation and understanding norms.
But the key giveaway is private education. If public education was efficient and effective- why have another tier?
Love this substack as you unpack critical research on Ed. Is it worth teaching and showing our students how to null notifications on devices then?
I really like this research, their data & this discussion…
I think this is something that teachers in schools need to learn about, understand & take some action in a way to negate these negative effects?
I’m so sorry - I’m unable to attend your sessions in Sydney or Melbourne as we are travelling at that time!
I wish you well & am sure you will be well received & respected! 👍
I believe that there are many teachers, who have good intentions & who don’t have the time or energy to learn what they need - as they would like to teach more effectively?
As well, much of what’s written isn’t in “plain English” = easy for teachers, parents & other adults ( even grandparents) to read, understand and learn…
In some situations - systems & schools prescribe materials that are NOT evidence-based & teachers have NO choices?
Thanks SO MUCH for all your posts on here - I am learning so much more - extending what I know and am more motivated to continue learning!!
Best wishes, safe travels in Australia 🇦🇺 & please keep posting here & elsewhere!
Your voice & expertise are much needed in today’s educational world 🌍!
Best always, Gail 👍👍😊
Agreed! 👍
What struck me most is the idea that disruption is personal. It isn’t just the visual cue — it’s the possibility that this concerns me. That anticipatory vigilance is exactly what I see in classrooms: even when phones are face down, there’s a hum of divided awareness.
The contagion point is sobering too. A single notification on one desk can ripple across a room. Attention is no longer just an individual discipline; it’s an environmental condition.
As educators, this feels less like a classroom management issue and more like a design question. If attention is “the rarest and purest form of generosity,” then part of our role is to build spaces where that generosity is protected. Not because devices are evil — but because depth cannot coexist with constant recruitment.
Thankfully, one of the best pieces of advice to reduce screen time is also a pretty great solution to have fewer notifications: Delete unnecessary apps from your phone! If an app isn’t there in the first place, the notifications won’t either.