We all hear people bragging about their ability of multitasking, specially in a social environment, where people are constantly on their phones while participating in a face-to-face conversation or group discussion. We claim being able to produce better results when doing multiple things at the same time. However, studies have revealed an astounding truth. Whether we like it or not, multitasking is not necessarily beneficial to our cognitive abilities. Namely, the more we multitask, the more we become susceptible to irrelevant environmental stimuli and irrelevant representations in memory. A great deal of our fragmented attention comes from social media itself. Not only do we now have the technology at our hands, but was it recently proven that talking about ourselves online stimulates the same parts of our brain responsible for orgasm, motivation, and love. Although researchers have just begun understanding about social media behavior and multitasking itself, the topic should be something to be discussed and brainstormed, since we all experience it to a certain level.
What are your opinions on that?
For a quick update on the subject, I recommend this video:
I personally do not think that social media and phones have helped us when it comes to multi tasking. I think it actually has the opposite effect because we think that we can multi task when we really can’t. I myself have experienced talking to someone while also chatting on my phone and realizing afterwards that I have no idea what the person just told me. I think because of mobile phones we are now unable to concentrate on one thing at a time because we constantly feel the need to check it while it class, for example. This means that we need to be able to multitask if we still want to focus on what the teacher is saying, but the harsh reality is that most of the time you just lose what has been said in class. Many people today are unable to turn their phones off and really focus on what is going on in the outside world. One Lecturer told us that this was because we always feel the need to stay connected, meaning if we are taking to someone we feel less alone. I think that is also one of the reasons why people are constantly on the phone.
Thus, my opinion is indeed that multitasking is a bad thing as it takes away our ability to concentrate on one thing only. We always feel the need to check our phones to see if any of our social media platforms have been updated, etc. I think because people believe they can multitask, they start to do it more often.