Technology and Society: Media-Multitasking and ‘The Good Life’
Be honest: how many other things are you doing right now?
Are you in the midst of responding to your e-mail, while casually browsing the web, scanning your friend’s most recent Facebook updates, chatting on Gchat, and mid-article on your favorite news site or blog?
Go ahead and count them: how many windows are open on your computer right now?
And what else are you doing? Are you listening to music, watching TV, or half-talking to a friend nearby? Is your cell phone within a hands reach, ready to be answered the instant you hear a text message or phone call? Or perhaps you’re even reading this on your cell phone, on your way in between classes or meetings, biding time while waiting for the next thing to require your attention?
No, this isn’t a post about Big Brother watching you; it’s about a term we all know too well: Multitasking. We have become, as writer Christine Rosen says, “mavens of multitasking,” glued to our technological gadgets, driven by our seemingly endless to-do lists of tasks. My post today asks, how have all the technologies we use – the cell phones, computers, PDAs, e-mails, and the like– accelerated the extent to which we multitask? And more importantly, what effect has it had on the way we live our lives?
A New Type Of Multitasking
The compulsion to multitask is driven by the desire to get more things done in less time, in a world that is moving at an increasingly fast pace. But gone are the days where “multitasking” meant simply reading the news while finishing your work assignment, or the common example “walking while chewing gum.” Modern technologies have ushered in a new type of multitasking–multitasking on steroids–where one cannot only do two things, but eleven things at once. Now, we live in an era where multitasking means reading the news, checking one’s e-mail, texting a friend, watching a youtube video, downloading music, and finishing a work assignment—all, if you please, while walking and chewing gum.
And I would venture to say that the new form of multitasking is not necessarily associated with accomplishing more tasks in the strictest sense, but rather just being tuned into more things at once. For those dubbed “media-multitaskers”- the ones watching TV while surfing the web on their laptops and sending text messages on their cell phones– the sheer number of available things to keep up with conditions participation across a multitude of media. Up-to-the second news updates, a constant stream of Facebook and Twitter statuses, endless e-mails, and an overwhelming amount of content available to explore at every turn: it’s hard to keep up with all the information — and impossible, certainly, if one doesn’t try to do more than one thing at once.
Writer Linda Stone says we are addicted to checking and rechecking these media, “constantly scanning for opportunities and staying on top of contacts, events, and activities in an effort to miss nothing” with what she calls “continuous partial attention”. “Our pleasure cycles are increasingly tied to it,” writes Sam Anderson, in his article “In Defense of Distraction“. And it has become hard to “unplug”, to take vacations, or, in some cases, to even take a few hours and go off the grid (just think of all the updates you’ll miss). One man wrote in the Mercury News:
“At work, of course, I typically spend almost my entire day in front of my computer. I’m constantly checking my e-mail, responding to instant messages, surfing the Web or playing around with various software programs. (And) When I’m away from my desk, I’m still tied to technology. I have my iPhone with me at all times and use it to check my work e-mail, navigate to out-of-office meetings, listen to music and news — or play the occasional game. But even on vacation, I felt an urge to be engaged with something electronic.”
Thus, the modern day multitasking mentality is driven not only by our need to complete so many tasks, per se, but increasingly by our need to keep up with the constant information streams; and with information everywhere–and gadgets that allow us to access it—we’ve essentially adopted “multi-media-tasking” as a new way of life. The question posed by ethics and technology would be: is it a good life?
Multitasking and “The Good Life”
Examining the good life inevitably asks us to consider what values we cultivate, and whether the path we are going down is the path we should be going down. When we think about technology and multitasking, we often imagine it makes us better communicators, able to be more on top of relevant information, and in general, capable of getting more done (yet whether or not these are achieved is up for debate). But when it comes cultivating the virtues of patience (“Patience is a virtue”, as we all know), or the virtue of perseverance (in other words, sustained attention) where does the multi-tasking mentality lead us? When we think about the quality of the activities we pursue instead of the quantity, what is all of this media-multi-tasking contributing to our lives?
I think the two interesting things to consider on this topic are multitasking’s effect on attention and engagement.
“When we talk about multitasking,” writer Christine Rosen says, “we are really talking about attention: the art of paying attention, the ability to shift our attention, and, more broadly, to exercise judgment about what objects are worth our attention.”
“People who have achieved great things,” she continues, “often credit for their success a finely honed skill for paying attention.”
Attention, to be sure, is a critical virtue to cultivate. Isaac Newton said that, for his discovereries, he owed “more to patient attention than any other talent.” Psychologist William James remarked, “The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgment, character, and will.”
“Tell me what you pay attention to,” Philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset said, “and I will tell you who you are.”
So how are all of us multitaskers doing on the attention front? Since we’re paying attention to so many things, we must be getting high marks, right?
Unfortunately, wrong. Studies confirm what I would suspect many people probably already know deep down, as each of us has had the experience of trying to complete a project while doing a million other things, only to get none of them done very well. We are bad at paying attention while we’re multitasking. Really bad at it, in fact.
A recent study conducted by Clifford Nass at Stanford University (carried out with an eye towards today’s “media-multitaskers”) showed this finding. When students were asked to multi-task while performing attentional tasks, the college-aged participants performed horribly on staying focused on what they were asked to focus on. “They’re suckers for irrelevancy,” Nass said. “Everything Distracts Them.”
Not only did they perform poorly on the rote memorization, Nass says, but on analytical types of thinking as well.
“I was very curious because I live in a dormitory here at Stanford, and I was curious how these kids were doing so many things at once. And so I wondered, jeez, you know, what is their special gift? What is their remarkable talent that I seem to lack? And our research suggests they don’t have one…
Even when we did not ask them to do anything close to the level of multitasking they were doing, their cognitive processes were impaired. So basically, they are worse at most of the kinds of thinking not only required for multitasking but what we generally think of as involving deep thought.”
Research on brain scans from UCLA has showed that our brains are terrible at switching tasks, and that doing so even results in a phyisiological stress response. Walter Kirn, Author of “The Autumn of Multitaskers” explains,
“Multitasking messes with the brain in several ways. At the most basic level, the mental balancing acts that it requires—the constant switching and pivoting—energize regions of the brain that specialize in visual processing and physical coordination and simultaneously appear to shortchange some of the higher areas related to memory and learning. Even worse, certain studies find that multitasking boosts the level of stress-related hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline and wears down our systems through biochemical friction, prematurely aging us. In the short term, the confusion, fatigue, and chaos merely hamper our ability to focus and analyze, but in the long term, they may cause it to atrophy.”
UCLA psychologist Russell Poldrack adds:
“Multi-tasking adversely affects how you learn. Even if you learn while multi-tasking, that learning is less flexible and more specialized, so you cannot retrieve the information as easily. Our study shows that to the degree you can learn while multi-tasking, you will use different brain systems.”
An oft cited study of workplace efficiency done by UC Irvine also demonstrated the ineffectiveness of multitasking. Their study showed that employees spent nearly a third of their day recovering from “information overload”, and that it took employees anywhere from 12 to 25 minutes to fully rebound from being distracted from an e-mail or phone call and resume their actual work. This loss of productivity, Balex Research estimates, cost the corporate world an average of $650 billion dollars in revenue due to inefficiency in 2008 (the number has since increased to $900 billion according to their website).
So still think you’re good at multitasking? Nass addresses you in his interview with NPR:
“One of the things that seems to be true is people who multitask very, very frequently believe they are excellent at it, and they’re actually, as far as we can tell, the worst at it of any people.”
And yet, we all multitask, and will likely continue to, perhaps even more so as our gadgets advance. But if the research is to be trusted, then the media-multitaskers must really be missing out: in paying attention to so many things, are we really paying attention to anything at all?
Life as A Multitasker
Examples on a college campus abound in our multitasking, attention-challenged culture. It seems an unwelcome challenge for students to sit for 50 or 90 minutes of class without checking their e-mail, Facebook, or websites on their laptops under the guise of taking notes, or sneaking text messages on their cell phones under their desks. Sitting and reading books or writing a paper for any sustained period of time is like a Sisyphean battle, trying to resist the urge of Youtube, e-mail or some other online interruption only to have to start the assignment over again at the beginning because of all the distractions. Having a full conversation without someone whipping out and checking his or her cell phone seems to take more willpower than most are willing to exercise.
So what are the implications that this type of attention-splitting has for our ability to engage with what we’re doing? In these instances, it seems, significant opportunities for engagement are lost: for intellectual engagement in class, for deep reading of text and focused, sustained writing, for genuine conversation. What value is gained from reading a book, if while reading that book you are interrupted so many times that you don’t absorb any of it? What worth is there in a conversation with someone if you’re constantly signaling that you’re more interested in a conversation taking place elsewhere? The opportunity to truly immerse yourself with any one thing seems replaced by the opportunity to sort-of engage with ten things.
Going forward, two perspectives emerge for the future of the multitaskers. Sam Anderson, author of “In Defense of Distraction”, takes an optimistic view, thinking that we will adapt to this attention-splitting, media-multitasking mode we are in, and grow as a result:
“There’s been lots of hand-wringing about all the skills (kids who have grown up multitasking) might lack, mainly the ability to concentrate on a complex task from beginning to end, but surely they can already do things their elders can’t—like conduct 34 conversations simultaneously across six different media, or pay attention to switching between attentional targets in a way that’s been considered impossible. …As we become more skilled at the 21st-century task Meyer calls “flitting,” the wiring of the brain will inevitably change to deal more efficiently with more information.
Kids growing up now might have an associative genius we don’t—a sense of the way ten projects all dovetail into something totally new. They might be able to engage in seeming contradictions: mindful web-surfing, mindful Twittering. Maybe, in flights of irresponsible responsibility, they’ll even manage to attain the paradoxical, Zenlike state of focused distraction.”
Christine Rosen, on the other hand, takes a strong view that “continued partial attention” will lead us down a bad road, in her article “The Myth of Multitasking”:
“The picture that emerges of these pubescent multitasking mavens is of a generation of great technical facility and intelligence but of extreme impatience, unsatisfied with slowness and uncomfortable with silence…
Perhaps we will simply adjust and come to accept what (psychologist William) James called “acquired inattention.” E-mails pouring in, cell phones ringing, televisions blaring, podcasts streaming – all this may become background noise, like the “din of a foundry or factory” that James observed workers could scarcely avoid at first, but which eventually became just another part of their daily routine. …(But) when people do their work only in the “interstices of their mind-wandering,” with crumbs of attention rationed out among many competing tasks, their culture may gain in information, but it will surely weaken in wisdom.”
On this issue, I’m more inclined to agree with Rosen than with Anderson. Though Anderson has a point that we will likely adapt, I question his premise: is “focused distraction” something we should be aiming for? Do we really want to promote this type of information grazing across so many mediums, in place of deep engagement with singular activities? Consider Multitasking expert David Meyer’s comment: “If Einstein were alive today, he’d probably be forced to multitask so relentlessly in the Swiss patent office that he’d never get a chance to work out the theory of relativity.”
I think another interesting question to consider is one posed by “lifehacker” Merlin Mann, who Anderson interviewed in his article. “Is it clear to you,” Mann says, “that the last fifteen years represent an enormous improvement in how everything operates?”
I would imagine many people, particularly technology enthusiasts, would answer, “Of course!” (the iPhone users in particular). But it’s an interesting question to consider: how do we define improvement? Does it mean more information, at a faster rate? If so, then the answer would unequivocally be yes. But what happens when we define improvement as deep, sustained interest in activities, better human interactions, and enjoyment of day-to-day life? Under these premises, have all of these multitasking-enabling technologies improved, or detracted from, our lives?
Questions:
How has technology changed the way you multitask?
What effect has multitasking had on the amount of attention you pay to things, and how engaged you are in the activities you do?
Leave your thoughts in the comments section below!
Listen to Stanford University’s Clifford Nass talk about his study on media-multitaskers on NPR:
This article raises some interesting questions about the usefulness of multitasking. On one level, multitasking is harmful: divided attention means lower net productivity. On another level, though, multitasking seems to be an essential and inescapable aspect of human life. Biologically, we are nothing but unrelenting multitaskers. Our hearts beat as our eyes blink as our lungs inhale – all because multiple networks of neurons fire simultaneously. Biological multitasking underlies all complex behavior. But is this really the ‘type’ of multitasking that this article discusses? There seems to be a difference between hearts beating and eyes blinking, on the one hand, and iPhone emailing and medical school studying, on the other. And this difference might lie in the physical vs. the mental. Physical processes, like the beating of a heart or the blinking of an eye, happen involuntarily: they are reflexive and instinctual behaviors, deeply embedded into the fabric of complex biological systems. Mental processes, like memorizing human anatomy or navigating through email on an iPhone, happen because we make them happen. The question is whether mental multitasking, unlike biological multitasking, is necessarily counterproductive. Some argue that the answer is an unequivocal ‘yes.’ Walter Kirn notes, “the mental balancing acts that [multitasking] requires—the constant switching and pivoting—energize regions of the brain that specialize in visual processing and physical coordination and simultaneously appear to shortchange some of the higher areas related to memory and learning.”
Why is biological multitasking so beneficial and mental multitasking so harmful? Sure, as Kirn notes, neurological evidence suggests that attempts at multitasking actually ’shortchange areas related to memory and learning.’ But perhaps we’re simply on the way to becoming as proficient at mental multitasking as we are currently at biological multitasking. If we look at the development of life on earth, we see that the kind of biological multitasking that keeps us alive today didn’t exist a few a billion years ago, when life first started forming. The biological processes in the first unicellular organisms were not of same complexity as those in today’s higher life forms; prokaryotic cells’ survival, for example, required only ’simple’ biological tasks like organizing amino acids into proteins. After billions of years of evolution, however, these unicellular organisms developed into multicellular, biologically multitasking organisms – and in the process the mental realm emerged from the growing organizational complexity of the physical realm. If the physical realm developed an ability to multitask, why then wouldn’t the mental realm follow suit – especially if the mental emerged from the physical. Perhaps in a billion years, sentient organisms will be able to engage productively in multiple mental tasks at once – in the same way the human body is now able to engage in multiple biological tasks at once. The involuntary biological multitasking of complex, multicellular organisms could not have been predicted a priori from unicellular organisms – perhaps this is true of mental multitasking as well.
Guilty as charged, I am the ultimate media multitasker. Perhaps this is because I do not know any other way to effectively work. Growing up in Silicon Valley I have always had a computer in front of me, my blackberry in hand, and the television going on all at the same time. For me this is a preference, I enjoy staying on task and keeping busy, even if it is at the expense of constantly switching my attention. After reading all of the studies throughout the article, I am ashamed to agree that I too start at my computer (along with other devices) for almost 8 hours a day. Of course I could blame most of this time in homework for school, but that isn’t to say that I don’t enjoy surfing the web and logging onto Facebook every time I receive a new comment on my wall. What has made my multitasking life so much more complicated is having all of my devices on my phone. With an app. for facebook, myspace, e-mail, google and school work it seems I always have information at the tip of my fingers at the cost of never being able to put my phone down. I currently have 5 browser windows open on my laptop, with 2 tabs on each of the windows. On my phone, I can open any application I wish while switching back and forth, chewing bubble gum, planning my night ahead, taking notes of a class lecture and daydreaming simultaneously. These facts are not some that I am particularly proud of, but they make me question how mulititasking (especially with media) has consumed so much of my life?
As I mentioned before, I am simply used to this lifestyle and found that some days multitasking is the only way to productively accomplish something. This harsh fact relates to how I have learned this trait through our society. As our technologies advance so does our sense of time and space. Our world is moving at such a fast pace these days that I notice myself becoming irritable if my browser window is not loading fast enough, my coffee is not ready on time, or simply waiting for others to complete a task. I have no time to waste in a day and therefore no time to rest. This is true for almost every person who has a job, family and life within todays society. Our world has made it so that we all must be excellent multitaskers so we do not fall behind. I assume that when I graduate from college, I will no longer be cramming in the wee hours of the night over a paper, but instead be working on a presentation for the office. Instead of being consumed with homework each day, I will find myself with the same amount if not more work ahead of me. This is a harsh reality that our society has faced and unfortunately as I see it we are only going to begin losing our time even more. It is exhausting to keep up with the norms of our harsh technological world, but as long as I have known I have always been a media multitasker. For me, this is not a huge issue, I am just glad I realize this and am able to take a breath for myself once in a while.
I would have to take a dystopian point of view regarding the effects of multitasking technology has created. While technological advancements have created new potentials and opportunities with what we can do in a short period of time, are we really getting anything out of it? Is it really productive multitasking? Or blind multitasking? Right now, I have an overwhelming number of windows open. My Facebook page, my e-mail, my Communication class homepage, Santa Clara University homepage, course availability site, Microsoft word, …the list goes on. I think that if I only had this one website open, I would feel underproductive and like I could be doing more. This mentality is a direct result of technology. If technology didn’t make it possible for me to be “doing” so many things at once, there would be no need to feel like I have to have one hundred windows open while I am in front of the screen. The effect multitasking has had is somewhat bittersweet: while it creates this notion that I am getting a lot more done in a shorter period of time, I am actually focusing less attention over a wider range of things. The negative effects of multitasking are somewhat hidden; they are only brought to the fore when you really sit down and think about how easy it is to text, Facebook, e-mail, and browse the web all at once. It’s truly overwhelming and it is scary to think that this is what I have become used to. Even take the blackberry—just on this single technological device, I can use my multitasking skills to the fullest: check my Facebook, get an email, get a text message, and listen to a voicemail. The options are endless. What’s ironic is that the more multitasking I do, the more stressed I feel. While it may appear like I am getting a lot done at once, this is certainly not the case.
Multitasking has never been one of my strengths in life. But as I have gotten older, and advancements have been made in the realm of technology, I have slowly tried to teach myself how to multitask, especially when doing work. The problem is, it is still hard for me to do, and being in a dorm at college surrounded by energized students can make it even harder for me to concentrate. It is not that I do not listen to music while searching the web or talking with friends, but I try to avoid multitasking when actual work is involved.
I realize that with the world becoming so fast-paced, multitasking is almost a necessity now-a-days. We can see the lack of attention people have when they must divert themselves to one specific thing. Just look at music videos or sports news shows; the clips are extremely short., and camera angles change frequently. This shows that even in many professional settings, people need to at least be able to multitask.
The fact that people always need to be doing something is the main reason the iphone has taken off in popularity. The iphone is the multitasking tool of the century. While we are walking to our next destination, we can check our email, listen to music, and read news articles; the possibilities are endless. Because of this, I worry that my inability to multitask will hurt me later in life, especially regarding jobs.
However, I also realize that in a school setting, it has a positive side. When it comes to homework, I stay away from music, and I do not sign onto Facebook. Instead, I have to focus on the specific task I am doing. On the other hand, everyone around me tends to strive off of multitasking. They play music, open up five tabs on their Internet browsers, and even talk with other friends, all while writing a paper. In a way, it is nice and peaceful to be able to tone all of these distractions out. I do not need to think about anything other than what I am doing at that point in time. Even with movies or television shows, my one-track mind allows me to fully appreciate what I am up to right then.
Nevertheless, I must face reality. And reality is pushing me to join in and multitask alongside everyone else, because whether or not I decide to have a one-track mind, people multitasking around me still impact the outcome of what I am doing. In that sense, I have become better at cancelling out the music down the hall in my dorm, or the television pointing in my direction. So as for now, I will attempt to remain away from multitasking. That is, if work is involved.
I must say, I am constantly multitasking and usually one of my tasks includes technology. Tuesday is my day to cook and while doing so, I am on the phone with one of my sisters while watching TV. That type of multitasking does work for me and I do get more things done. However, when it comes to higher cognitive activities I do not recommend multitasking. I have had the experience of writing up something while seeing TV and when I go back and check I realize that I wrote a couple of words that express what I am watching and not what I am thinking about. This is evidently not time efficient and affects me negatively in a direct way. When writing a paper I need to be completely isolated from everything else. Ask me how I do that? I use a technology: sound-canceling earphones. It is inevitable to be in constant contact with technology. However, what distinguishes intelligent people from the rest is that they choose what, when and where they use technology depending on the circumstances. Knowing this does not mean that I strictly follow it. I still cave to multitasking. Without knowing it I sometimes endanger myself by putting on make-up while driving and changing the song on my Ipod. Technology and gadgets are such an essential part of our lives that we do not even notice the degree of attachment we have to them.
Multitasking and technology seem to be directly correlated. The most obvious example is cell phones. Before, we used to just talk on them. It was more convenient than dialing house phones looking for your friends. Then phones could take pictures as well as make calls. Then they added video. Think about how many features your phone has today. I can use my phone to simultaneously check my email, sports scores, bank account, and maybe if I have time, use it to call somebody. It isn’t a bad thing either. Just the natural progression of society. Our parents aren’t traditionally good at multitasking because they didn’t practice it as much as the younger generation does. The next generation is going to be doing so many things at once it will probably make our heads hurt. But it will just be a regular thing for them. Just a sign of how society is keeping up with increases in technology.
I certainly agree that multitasking and technology are related, but I think this is simply because technology makes multitasking possible. Without IPODS, computers, cell phones, and other technological gadgets that are most commonly used to multitask, it would be impossible to multitask in the ways that so many people are accustomed to. I think all of us have worked on papers while listening to music, or attempted to have a conversation with someone who is constantly checking their phone for text messages, e-mails, or facebook messages, and the quality of both are significantly decreased. I think acperez makes a good point, stating that he (or she) remembers writing papers and writing words from the television he is simultaneously watching, and then, looking back, notices that his paper uses words he heard from the television that do not belong in the paper. This is a common problem that I have admittedly had, and again reflects the difficulty of multitasking.
Still, Sam Anderson’s point in “In Defense of Distraction, argues that our brain may evolve in order to more effectively multi-task. This possibility is intriguing, for if it is truly possible, our abilities could greatly grow. However, without more information, I am not inclined to believe that it is absolutely inevitably that our brain will, “change to deal more effectively with more information”. Even if this is true, how do we know that our brain won’t simultaneously regress in its ability to focus on and analyze one task? If our brain will evolve towards sufficient multitasking with practice, how do we know it won’t lose the abilities of concentration without practice?
My increase in multitasking has lead me to be less engaged in things. I can have several conversations through texting, instant messaging, ect. and since these conversations are being filtered through a screen I can remove myself even a step further from these conversations by watching t.v., listening to music, ect. With modern technology it is very easy to have unengaged social interactions. However, I feel that the new level of multitasking allowed through modern-technology has increased my engagement with some things. My personal example is with video games. (I play a lot of fighting games, and in them timing is key. A combo can go terribly wrong if something isnt timed correctly.) I can more effectively learn combos for fighting games with modern-technology. I can look up how to do the combo on youtube, be playing the game, and talking on a message board with someone about the particular combo. I am multi-tasking; watching a video, talking to someone, and playing a game, but for one goal. So I would say that there is an increased level of engagement with some things. But I am less engaged with most things. There is a constant level of “I would rather be” or “I could rather be” in almost everything I do because in any given situation there is an escape. A text can get me out of any situation, multi-tasking helps me not die of uninterest.