Consider yourself lucky, you get to sit in class for approximately four hours per day. Sound contradictory? It’s not.

Some of us are even luckier. Our parents willingly pay the thousands of dollars it costs to attend the Premier Public University of the Northeast, as the administration continually calls it. My economics teacher loves to talk about opportunity cost, which is what we give up in order to attend class. So while many of us are willing to sacrifice significant sums of money, extensive time and assiduous effort, it appears that Facebook is too high of a price for others to give up.

There is no denying that technology has dramatically improved almost all aspects of life. Education included, students now have access to more information than ever before. However, with these privileges also comes the opportunity for distraction.

In high school, laptops, cell phones and PDAs simply were not allowed to be used in class. Come college, these restrictions are loosened and some students obviously seize such opportunity, many for different reasons than their professors would hope.

Facebook is just the first of many things some students simply can’t leave behind when attending class. Moving past the obvious student text messaging all class long, you would be amazed (or maybe not) at the various things students will do in class to make sure they are putting their tuition to good work. From Doom, Snood, YouTube, Facebook, to even the one student who was watching the Yankee game live on his laptop, there seems to be no limit on what good use students can make of recent technology.

If you are the one students who actually uses his/her laptop to take notes, I am sorry that you read this article. The reality is that when technology and distractions are available to us, we are inclined to use them, myself included. It is no wonder that new studies claim up to 20 percent of all children suffer from ADD/ADHD, which is becoming the most common umbrella disorder of our time. For all of us not on Ritalin, there is still hope. Before your next class, just leave the laptop in your dorm.

Your mother will be proud.

It becomes interesting to ponder what the next step in this technological intrusion upon education becomes. Teachers and students alike have seemingly become accustomed to the use of electronic devices in the classroom. The things one can do on a laptop are seemingly limitless, so does that mean we have seen the peak of technology as a distraction?

It’s doubtful. It is not unreasonable to believe that in the near future the next new technological advancement to steal our attention will arise. The question is whether or not we will do anything about it, and whether or not we even really have a choice.