Exploratory Essay

“We need technology in every classroom … because it is the pen and paper of our time, and it is the lens through which we experience much of our world,” writes David Warlick, a prominent education blogger. Increasingly, students attending institutions of higher education, such as MIT, rely on the Internet in their classroom environments, whether it be for taking notes, following along with presentation slides, or pursuing class-related inquiries. The prevalence of the Internet -- as it exists for both academic and non-academic purposes -- in lecture settings concerns many educators, leading them to question whether Internet access should be restricted in order to enhance learning and minimize distractions. Key research findings suggest that

Students have been found to give valid estimates of their personal Internet use and the effects it has on their class performance (Ravizza, Uitvlugt, & Fenn, 2016, p. 176). Interestingly, students who claim the Internet disrupts their learning actually use the Internet more than students who claim it does not, which goes to show that even when individuals are aware that Internet habits may affect exam scores, online behaviors persist. Students also accurately rate their percentage of class time spent on the Internet (Ravizza et al., 2016, p. 177). One might conjecture that if students’ attentions were being accidentally diverted, students would not realize how much time they are truly spending online. Therefore, students seem to be aware of their Internet practices. Using the Internet in class is a conscious decision and not simply an instinctive reaction to or an adverse side effect of having Internet access, so helping students to avoid unintentional distractions should not be a school’s primary reason for eliminating such

Studies have shown that “people who [engage] more heavily with mobile devices … [have] a greater tendency for impulsive behaviors” (Ravizza et al., 2016, p. 178). Given this concept, individuals would still feel compelled to use the Internet even if it were blocked; they might simply switch to smartphones and rely on their data plans or bypass blocks with anonymizing proxies. One study found that a significant amount of the variation in final-exam scores within an introductory psychology course could be explained by social-media browsing and online-video watching, which can both easily occur on smartphones that do not require the Internet (Ravizza et al., 2016, p. 176). Smartphones present a compelling alternative route for online interruptions. Additionally, the elimination of the Internet as it relates to addictive behavior may present other cognitive disturbances in the classroom, such as causing students to become absorbed by their desire to use the Internet and not pay attention to course content, for addiction has been shown to result in preoccupation with the subject of the addiction -- in this case, the Internet (American Society of Addiction Medicine, 2011). If students are ‘addicted’ to the Internet, restricting access to the ‘drug’