Important News:
[This article was first published on February 1st and republished on March 30th, 2026]
“Everyone knows it’s hard to get students to read,” noted The Atlantic, “but the crisis of concentration is not limited to written work: professors now find that they can’t even get their students to watch movies in cinemas.” Based on around twenty testimonies, journalist Rose Horowitch reveals this phenomenon, which she believes has worsened since the pandemic.
Even though some professors said they had noticed no changes, most have the opposite feeling, with some even comparing their students to “withdrawal smokers.” An example given is a professor who, despite the ban on using electronic devices during screenings, observed that half of the students “end up sneaking glances at their phones.”
As many students “categorically refuse the idea of in-person screenings,” several professors now “allow them to watch films via streaming.” However, do they actually do it? An example cited is Indiana University, where teachers can check if students are watching films on the campus’s internal streaming platform. The result: on average, less than 50% start the film and only 20% watch it to the end.
“Educating Perception”
At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a professor asked their students, through multiple-choice questions, what happens at the end of Francois Truffaut’s film Jules and Jim. More than half the class got it wrong, stating, for example, that “the characters hide from Nazis (although the movie is set before World War I)” or that “they have drinks with Ernest Hemingway (who does not appear in the film).” The professor admitted that the results of this test have been the worst in twenty years, forcing them to “adjust their grades.”
The journalist points out that most people she spoke to “did not blame the students” but rather attribute it to “the evolution of our media habits.” Young adults have no memory of a world without endless scrolling and spent, on average, “five hours a day on social media during adolescence, watching short videos back-to-back.” Analysis of “computer users’ attention” reveals that they now switch tabs or applications every 47 seconds, compared to once every two and a half minutes in 2004.
Netflix, aware of this issue, “advises its directors to repeat the plot three or four times to the characters so that multitasking viewers can follow the story,” as recently explained by Matt Damon on podcaster Joe Rogan’s show.
