Students at prestigious universities are finding it increasingly difficult to finish entire books because they have short attention spans.
Some teachers say they have been forced to reduce reading assignments and expectations to prevent students from becoming overwhelmed, although the workload is often less intense than in previous years.
It’s not that students are illiterate, they say, but rather that young people are not used to reading long texts and have difficulty concentrating for long periods of time, often due to the distraction of social media.
Victoria Kahn, a literature professor at UC Berkeley, said The Atlantic He used to assign 200 pages of reading each week, but now he has had to meet half of this requirement.
A woman struggles to concentrate on her work. Professors at top universities have noticed that their students have problems reading and concentrating (file image)
A TikTok video where a woman jokes about students’ shortening attention spans
She told the outlet: ‘I don’t do the whole Iliad. I assign books from The Iliad. I hope some of them read it in full.
“It’s not like I can say, ‘Okay, for the next three weeks I hope you read The Iliad,’ because they’re not going to.”
Meanwhile, Greg Wrenn, an English professor at James Madison University, wrote an alarming op-ed for Al Jazeera about students with ‘addictions’ to TikTok and the ‘devastating attention crisis’ this has caused.
Wrenn wrote: ‘In my environmental literature classes, I have seen firsthand the long-term effects of digital cocaine like TikTok on my college students.
“I’m on a mission, probably doomed to fail, to get you more present: to appreciate the written word and the natural world, sometimes using my wetsuit and scuba mask to get your attention when we talk about coral reefs and Ralph Waldo.’
Wrenn said her students often have difficulty completing the essays or excerpts she assigns them.
He added that some had even told him that they had never finished a book in their entire lives.
Another student, who wants to be a teacher, told her that she spends at least six hours a day on TikTok.
“My students are overstimulated, depressed and exhausted, from using TikTok and Instagram,” Wrenn said.
He added that each semester he lowers his expectations for students.
Nicholas Dames, a humanities professor at Columbia University, told The Atlantic that many of his students seemed bewildered by the idea of reading multiple books in a semester.
He recalled the day his jaw dropped when a student told him she had never had to read an entire book in high school and was having a hard time handling the coursework.
Student walk in front of the Columbia University Library (pictured). A Columbia professor talked about the problems his students had with reading
Columbia University professor Nicholas Dames, who shared his perspective on students’ reading abilities.
UC Berkley professor Victoria Khan said she assigns less than half the reading she used to do
Anthony Grafton, a Princeton historian, also told the Atlantic that his students often arrive on campus with a more limited vocabulary than in previous years.
Some educators have grown tired of college students’ lack of ability to complete their assignments and have taken to social media to air their complaints.
One TikToker, @advisorprof, posted a video ranting about students coming to class unprepared when they had only been asked to read minimally.
He said: ‘It doesn’t really matter how many pages we assign, before we assigned 100, now we assign 20 and still half the class doesn’t read.
‘What are you thinking? Why aren’t you reading? I mean, 20 to 30 pages a week isn’t much, it’s pretty much nothing.
‘When you sit there and look at your teacher with those empty eyes when he asks you a question and you can’t answer it because you didn’t come prepared, don’t you feel ashamed?’
Even some self-aware students have noticed how social media has impacted their attention span.
A cheerful TikTok video posted by @veejaxp read: “viewpoint: tiktok shortened your attention span so much that you use tiktoks instead of lectures to study.”
In the short clip, college students are seen searching for their study topics on TikTok to see if they can get a 15-second summary.
Although there is no hard data showing a rapid decline in students’ ability to read longer texts, which requires them to follow long story lines and retain key details, there is research on declining attention spans in general.
In 2004, the average time a person could concentrate on one thing was two and a half minutes. Now it’s 45 seconds, according to Northeast Global News.
A teacher posted a TikTok criticizing students for coming to class unprepared and not doing required reading.
Teenagers gather in a circle in front of their phones. Growing up surrounded by technology has damaged attention span (file image)
James Madison professor Greg Wrenn wrote an article describing his experiences with students’ declining attention spans.
A TikTok showed students searching for their study topics in 15-second videos instead of referring to their notes or lectures.
The problem faced by university professors can also be seen in younger students and relates to a broader issue of illiteracy and lack of reading proficiency.
Some Generation Alpha teachers are so enraged by “feral and illiterate” students that they are leaving the profession altogether.
The damaging combination of excessive technology and the lingering effects of pandemic closures has 92 percent of American public school leaders concerned that their children are not meeting academic standards, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
Literacy rates among younger students are also alarmingly low.
Two-thirds of American students in fourth through eighth grades are not proficient in reading, according to a literacy report from the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
The report says: ‘Literacy – the basic ability to read – is at the heart of all other learning. If students do not learn to read, they will not be able to read to learn in other subjects.’
About 40 percent of students nationwide cannot read at a basic level, the National Literacy Institute reported.
Public school curricula have placed more emphasis on short texts and standardized tests than on more complicated reading comprehension skills.
In recent decades, older students simply read less. The Atlantic reported that in 1976, nearly 40 percent of high school seniors read at least six books during the year and less than 12 percent read none. By 2022, those percentages had reversed.
Two phones charge TikTok. A student admitted to her teacher that she spends six hours a day on the app (file image)
In a Reddit post of an article from The Atlantic, more than 70 commenters weighed in to discuss the topic.
One user wrote: ‘I work in education and can confirm every word of this anecdotally, but God, it’s depressing to see the widespread trend on such a large scale. The slow death of book culture and the disappearance of a literate reading public is agonizing to witness.’
Another said learning about it made them “feel better about going to community college” because even the best students struggle with reading comprehension.
DailMail.com has contacted Columbia University, James Madison University and UC Berkley for comment.