The Impact of Digital Distractions and Attentional Suppression on Academic Performance

Our environment is saturated with distractions, yet digital distractions have emerged as the most prevalent in modern education, especially for college students who are interrupted by digital devices while trying to focus on their academic workload. These distractions, ranging from smartphone notifications to multitasking on multiple screens, can detract from academic pursuits and contribute to decreased academic performance. Attention is limited and depleted, the ability to suppress or manage such distractions becomes essential for maintaining focus and achieving academic success. This study aims to examine the relationship between individual differences in engagement with digital distractions and performance on an attentional suppression task, as well as their impact on grade point average (GPA). We assessed whether engaging in digital distractions, as measured by the Smartphone Distraction Scale (SDS), along with the ability to ignore distractors in favor of target stimuli, affects academic outcomes like GPA. We hypothesized that individuals who were more susceptible to digital distractions and who demonstrated less efficiency in attentional suppression would show lower GPAs compared to peers who manage distractions more effectively. The analysis investigated how SDS scores and attentional suppression performance together predict GPA among college students. Surprisingly, there was no significant relationship between SDS scores and performance on the attentional suppression task, but there was a significant result with SDS scores and GPA. While this study contributes to the growing literature on digital distractions and academic focus, the findings suggest that real-world distraction may be influenced by more complex mechanisms than cognitive distractor suppression alone.