Imagine if your future doctor was scrolling through TikTok while sitting in heart surgery class.

Or if your future lawyer was buying a Lululemon skirt instead of learning about civil cases.

Or if your future house’s architect was Snapchatting his buddies during class.

All of that is happening right now.

Irresponsible behavior always has consequences. If not now, it will in the future. We, as students, must be responsible as we navigate college in an environment where technology can be a distraction.

Not even 10 years ago, students didn’t have that problem. In classes and lectures, all they could do was pay attention or daydream away; scrolling through social media wasn’t an option.

Instagram was created in 2010, and Snapchat followed in 2011. Although Facebook was created way back in 2004, people didn’t have smartphones that they could carry around with them everywhere.

And a few years before that, in 1998, Google was created. That means those who got their degrees in the ‘90s couldn’t google their way through college.

The doctors, engineers, lawyers and other professionals of past generations learned through attending lectures, researching old documents and reading thick copies of books. There was no Quizlet or ChatGPT.

Now, of course, this doesn’t mean the students of today aren’t learning because of technology. On the other hand, we have the opportunity to learn more effectively if we use technology to our advantage. All the tools modern technology provides can be used to make us better students and professionals.

But social media can also hinder that progress if we use it at the wrong time.

It takes 23 minutes to regain your focus after you’ve been distracted, according to a study by the University of California, Irvine. That means if you check social media half an hour into your class, it’ll take 23 minutes to focus again. That’s 23 minutes of wasted time. 

According to a study by Tallo, over 80% of GenZ says social media is a distraction while doing schoolwork. We are probably all guilty of picking up our phones in the middle of working on an assignment.

It can be hard to resist the urge to check our phones all the time, as social media has proven to be addictive. And, yes, Google and other search engines can be tools for education. But if we don’t make responsible choices as to when and what we use technology for, it will come back to bite us in the end.

Isabella Albertini is a 23-year-old mass communication junior from Lima, Peru.