Key Takeaways and Conclusions

Appropriate in-school digital behavior(s) happens as much outside of the classroom as it does inside the classroom setting. School districts and their stakeholders (i.e., school board members, administration, faculty, staff, students, parents) must all work together to foster more collective “buy in” pertaining to appropriate digital device usage at school. Just because school districts have policies in place does not guarantee their efficacy. Consequently, school districts should be spending time incorporating digital distraction and its effects into digital literacy education and curriculum. Without accomplishing this, mobile technology’s ill effects on time-on-task attention, learning focus, knowledge retention, learning transfer, and metacognition will continue to plague students and school districts across the globe. Students will never achieve anything remotely close to learning in the flow with today’s in-class digital distractions, and with artificial intelligence like ChatGPT building momentum, our students’ learning potential is in jeopardy.