An earlier version of this story appeared in The Blaze.
It starts with a small hum, filling the ear with rhythmic beats. As each note gets louder, the world begins to dim: voices dim, footsteps lose their sound, and other students fade into the background.
Headphones are everywhere at Rock Ridge High School in northern Virginia, whether over ears during homeroom, dangling out of pockets, or hidden under hoodies while seated in the back of a classroom.
One of the reasons headphones hold so much appeal is straightforward: control. In a school like Rock Ridge where over 1,500 students share noisy hallways, gyms, classrooms, and a cafeteria, headphones offer the ability to choose what you hear.
As much comfort as they may bring, their use in the classroom can create issues. Many teachers, administrators, and experts argue headphones can disrupt learning in more ways than one. Other teachers defend their use — at least here and there.
The reasons students use headphones in class are many. Some, like Rock Ridge junior Peyton Rodgers, are capitalizing on their perceived opportunity to take a break if they’re already familiar with the material being covered. “A lot of teachers post stuff already, so I like to go ahead and look at it before the lesson,” he said. “If they’re just going over what I already went over, I’ll put [my AirPods] in and just kind of not pay too much attention.”
Others wear AirPods with the intention of simultaneously listening to music and their teacher’s instruction. “I’ve used it during class, but I only put one AirPod in, so I can hear music and listen to what the teacher’s saying as well,” sophomore Braylen Ozele said. But, he added, “sometimes I might miss some material the teacher’s explaining, so then I’ll take the AirPod out.”
Ozele’s experience is common, and is one of the problems with student headphone use. The brain just isn’t wired to split attention, said Johns Hopkins University professor of cognitive science Michael McCloskey. “A lot of us have the feeling that we can do several different things at one time without much loss on any of them, but it’s really not true,” McCloskey said. “Our ability to divide our attention among different things is pretty limited, especially when they’re both challenging processes, [like] language. It’s not that you’re just listening to two different people talking in the same room. You’re dealing with two completely different mental spaces, and that’s hard to deal with.”
Teachers across departments and grade levels at Rock Ridge have observed that problem in action. “Even if they only had one ear going, they still were not able to take in what I was saying,” Latin teacher Emily Gilmore said. “Sometimes students have their AirPods in, and you can’t see it because it’s under their hair, and so just to make sure that people could focus as well as possible, I made sure to ask them to take out their earbuds or take off their headphones because I knew that if they had music playing, they would not be able to [listen].”
Other instructors note that for some students listening to music, multitasking isn’t necessarily the goal. AP Psychology and Global Studies teacher Nicole Spage has noticed “that the kids who are using headphones [are] not even trying to pay attention in class. They’re missing instruction, and so I think, [for] some of those kids, it’s affecting their grade,” she said.
The problem isn’t just that students can’t listen to their teachers in class — headphone use also limits spontaneous social interactions that are an important part of the learning experience. Math teacher Amina Attab said, “when they do group work, it’s important for me that they communicate with each other and talk to each other because I noticed in the past, when I used to allow some students to wear [headphones] during practice, while they were very focused on their work and doing the assignments, I noticed that they didn’t communicate at all.” There was, she said, “no social interaction whatsoever.”
Spage has noticed similar behavior among her students. “In psychology class, we sit at tables for a reason because we talk about a lot of issues, and we want to encourage discussion,” Spage said. “When you wear headphones, and you’re taking yourself out of the conversation, then you’re losing out, and the rest of the people around you are also losing out on what you have to say.”
As part of an effort to increase communication among students and to comply with a recent Virginia state law, the Loudoun County School Board enacted Policy 8655 in early January, which prohibits the use of all personal devices, including wireless headphones, for the entire school day. In a statement associated with earlier statewide guidance on the same topic, the Virginia Department of Education said “it is essential that students have the opportunity to develop face-to-face conversations and critical in-person communication skills during unstructured school hours.”
Although Rock Ridge is still in the beginning stages of enforcing its new policy, not all teachers agree with the idea of a complete ban of headphones — some still believe there are positive uses of headphones that should be considered.
Some teachers, including Spage, believe that while headphones should be put away during instructional time, there are some cases when the use of headphones can be beneficial, like for reducing stress and anxiety. “[When] we’re working on a presentation, or we’re getting ready to take a test, we’re setting up a situation where it creates anxiety for them,” she said. “Headphones help tune out everybody else’s chatter, which can add to anxiety for some kids, and sometimes [wearing headphones] helps relax them.”
Other teachers, like English teacher Paul Koch, think headphones should be allowed for some instances like independent writing time. “[For] writing in your notebook [and] one-on-one time, headphones-on is great,” said Koch, whose creative writing class includes time spent journaling about music, an activity which requires students to listen to songs. He explained, “I’ll have students find a song that follows a plot diagram and then practice the Freytag’s Pyramid, and plot diagramming, and it’s rather confusing when you have 25 kids, and they’re all playing their song out loud.”
Gilmore says that, at the end of the day, young people should use their judgment about when and where to pop an earbud in. “Students should try to be aware of when it is and is not an appropriate time to use headphones,” she said. “If the teacher’s talking, if they’re telling you directions, if they’re giving you information, don’t use the headphones, but if you’re working by yourself, if you’re watching a class-related video, then yes, that is appropriate.”
