Media Multitaskers: “Suckers for Irrelevancy”
One of the great wisdom struggles for all of us—but maybe especially for our kids—is to learn how best to pull worthwhile information from the avalanche of data constantly sweeping over and around us. As adults, some of us have assumed that our kids are just better than we are at simultaneously managing multiple streams of data—homework, music, TV, Twitter, texting, IM, etc. We shake our heads and wonder how they can keep up with it all and still make any valuable sense of it.
A new study out of Standford, however, suggests that they’re not doing as well as we thought. In fact, they (and we) may be doing some real damage to their ability to think clearly.
People who are regularly bombarded with several streams of electronic information do not pay attention, control their memory or switch from one job to another as well as those who prefer to complete one task at a time, a group of Stanford researchers has found. . . . after putting about 100 students through a series of three tests, the researchers realized those heavy media multitaskers are paying a big mental price.
“They’re suckers for irrelevancy,” said communication Professor Clifford Nass, one of the researchers whose findings are published in the Aug. 24 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “Everything distracts them.”
The story is worth reading. Does wisdom demand that we start helping our kids (and each other) to focus on one thing at a time? The data is still coming in, but it’s a conversation worth having.
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