Texting as a distraction to learning in college students

•Participants were randomly assigned to texting or control groups during a lecture.•Participants in the texting group scored significantly lower on a quiz.•No moderating effects were found for texting’s effect on the quiz score.•Participants believe text messaging is distracting to other users, but not them.

Texting has been shown to be cognitively distracting for students in lecture settings, but few have done empirical work, or looked at moderating effects between texting and academic outcomes. This experimental study compared the proportion of correct answers on a lecture quiz between students who were randomly assigned to text message during a pre-recorded lecture and those who were not, while investigating possible moderators. The participants who text messaged throughout the lecture scored significantly lower in percent of correct responses (t(95) = −4.6, p < .001, d = .93). No moderating effects were found, including: perceived distraction, perceived texting ability, number of text messages sent and received during the lecture, age, and gender.