Make technology your friend!
Elio Damato
During school, technology can be a huge distraction. It might feel like there’s always someone on your back telling you to get off your phone and go and study. A lot of us know the feeling of saying “I’ll just check Facebook” and then somehow it’s 2 hours later and you haven’t accomplished anything.
Social media isn’t inherently bad, though. It’s a great way to communicate with your friends, and maintaining good relationships when you’re studying is really important. It’s especially great for any friends you don’t go to school with. Social media can also be really fun, and a great way to relax.
If you find social media and everything else that’s out there on the internet is too much of a distraction when you’re trying to study, you’re going to need some ways to manage this.
If you think you have a certain level of self-control, you can probably switch your phone onto silent (completely silent – no vibrations!) and hide it in a cupboard for an hour or two while you do some homework.
It can also be a good idea to sit your phone in a different room while you study – maybe have it charging in the kitchen when you’re doing homework in your bedroom.
If you don’t have this level of self-control, ask someone you trust (maybe one of your parents) to keep your phone with them for an hour while you do some study.
We also need to remember that technology can be really useful when we’re studying. The internet is an amazing resource, so it’s entirely understandable if you have your laptop open while you’re doing some work. However, sometimes it feels like an automatic response to just open Facebook when you get stuck for a minute.
If you struggle to stay off social media, there are plenty of apps that can help you. They block certain websites for an amount of time that you set, so that you can get some work done. Here are some apps you could try: SelfControl, Cold Turkey, and Facebook Limiter.
There are so many useful websites out there that can help you study, as well. You could download audiobooks if you can’t quite manage to read your novel one more time, find flashcards on Quizlet, or watch some TED talks to broaden your knowledge.