Mountaineer Minutes

The Big Distraction: Facebook

By Brittany Moorehead

Credit to google images.

There appears to be a big distraction at National Sports Academy in Lake Placid, New York. The source of this distraction involves students using the internet during the academic day.

The number of students using the internet or so called “surfing” the web is growing at an alarming rate. Each of the 15 students that I interviewed admitted to using the internet for non-school related purposes. All of these students were on the internet from a range of thirty minutes all the way to four hours.

Some of the classes at NSA require the use of a computer such as Journalism and Apex based courses which could be the reason for such high rates of “surfing.” Rather than doing the work they are suppose to be doing, students may wander to sites such as Facebook. Facebook is the most visited site among the NSA student body.

“I think kids spend about an hour a day on average “surfing” the web,” said Luke Hudak.

He also went on to add, “It’s not as big of an issue for Juniors and Seniors/PGs because they should know when they should be doing work and recognize that if they don’t finish an assignment in class, then they will have to finish it later. On the other hand, I believe that it’s important to keep a close eye on the younger students.”

On average there are about six or seven individuals on Facebook on any given period throughout the academic day, which is pretty high considering there are 80 something students in the NSA community. It’s hard to say whether these kids are truly distracted though because they might have that period off.

 Based on the students that I interviewed, most tend to be on Facebook anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour during night time study hall. The students that spend more time on this site tend to have lower grades than those who spend minimal time on the site.

It’s difficult to prevent students from getting distracted because they have to be somewhat accountable. If their grades begin to slip, they should realize that they need to spend more time on their academics and less time getting distracted.

There is a few ways that teachers can help prevent students from becoming distracted. One way is by not allowing them access to their computer when one is not needed. Also, teachers can look over the students’ shoulders every once in a while to ensure that they are hard at work.

Other than these few ways, I believe that students have to be aware of what they are doing. They need to have the ability to avoid going on other sites when they are typing an essay or are using educational resources online. The internet is a great resource to use because it’s fast and easy but we have to be careful with some of the sites that can cause distractions.