Students learn less when they use a laptop or tablet to take notes in class and presentations.

And their grades are worse than those who do not use these note taking aids.

They distract users from receiving the message and distract those around them.

This spells trouble in corporate meeting rooms and at presentations where digital devices are standard equipment.

The people who look like they are trying to absorb the most from the content presentation are actually hurting themselves.

In random tests at Princeton and UCLA, students who used pen and paper outperformed the digital note takers.

Some professors discourage or outright ban the use of laptops and tablets because smartphones can take pictures of handwritten notes that can be stored later on a student’s computer.

The point is – access to information and ease of absorbing such information is turning about to be secondary to focusing on the content in real time and thinking about it.

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