Impact of Technology on Student Engagement in Cinema

[This article was originally published on February 1 and republished on March 30, 2026]

The Atlantic notes, “Everyone knows that it is difficult to get students to read,” but the crisis of concentration extends beyond just writing: teachers are now finding it challenging to even get their students to watch films in the cinema. Based on about twenty testimonies, journalist Rose Horowitch reveals this phenomenon, which she believes has intensified since the pandemic.

Even though some professors have “confessed to not observing any changes,” most feel the opposite and, in some cases, go as far as comparing their students “to smokers in withdrawal.” She first mentions the example of a professor who, despite the ban on using electronic devices during screenings, notices that half of his students “end up sneakily glancing at their phones.”

As many students “categorically refuse the idea of in-person screenings,” several professors “now allow them to watch films through streaming.” But are they actually doing it? The American monthly magazine mentions the case of 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 his students, through multiple-choice questions, what happens at the end of François Truffaut’s film Jules et Jim. More than half of the class got it wrong, claiming, for example, that “the characters hide from the Nazis (when the film is set before World War I)” or that “they have drinks with Ernest Hemingway (who does not appear in the film).” It is the first time in twenty years, admits the professor, that the results of this exam have been so poor, forcing him to “adjust his grades.”

Nevertheless, the journalist points out that most of her interviewees “did not blame the students,” but rather “the evolution of our media habits.” Indeed, young adults have “no memory of a world without endless scrolling” and during their adolescence, they spent on average “five hours a day on social media […],” watching short videos one after the other. 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 issue, “advises its directors to repeat the plot to their characters three or four times so that multitasking viewers can follow the story,” as recently explained by Matt Damon to podcaster Joe Rogan.