This article was originally published on February 1 and republished on March 30, 2026
“Everyone knows that it’s difficult to get students to read,” notes The Atlantic, “but the crisis of concentration is not limited to writing: teachers now find that they can’t even get their students to watch films in the cinema anymore.” Based on about twenty testimonies, journalist Rose Horowitch reveals this phenomenon, which she believes has intensified since the pandemic.
Even though some teachers have “confided that they have noticed no change,” most have the opposite feeling and, for some, go as far as comparing their students “to smokers in withdrawal.” She first cites the example of a teacher who, despite the ban on using electronic devices during screenings, observes that half of his students “end up sneaking glances at their phones.”
Since many students “categorically refuse the idea of in-person screenings,” several teachers “now allow them to watch films via streaming.” But do they? The American monthly magazine cites the example of Indiana University, where teachers can check if students are watching films on the campus’ 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 teacher asked his students, with multiple-choice questions, what happened at the end of François Truffaut’s film Jules and Jim. More than half of the class got it wrong, claiming, for example, that “the characters hide from Nazis (even though the film is set before World War I)” or “they have drinks with Ernest Hemingway (who doesn’t appear in the film).” This is the first time in twenty years, admits the professor, that the results of this exam have been this poor, forcing him to “adjust his grades.”
However, the journalist points out that most of her interviewees “have not blamed the students” but rather “the evolution of our media habits.” Young adults indeed have “no memory of a world without endless scrolling” and they spent on average “five hours a day on social media during their adolescence […], watching short videos back to back.” An analysis of “computer user attention” reveals that they now switch tabs or applications every 47 seconds, compared to once every two and a half minutes in 2004.
Netflix, well aware of this problem, “advises its directors to repeat the plot three or four times to the characters so that multitasking viewers can follow the story,” as Matt Damon recently explained to podcaster Joe Rogan.
