It Could Be Crack

I am an addict. BlackBerry, Check... Cell phone, Check... I-Pod and Laptop, Check and Check. I can take Care or my work commitments, write a grocery list, set an appointment for my dogs to be groomed and help my children with their homework as I do my own. I am a master of multi-tasking, or so I thought. The more I multi-task the more I find myself reliant on all the digital devices that keep connected. The more connected I am, the more I feel I am "getting things done", but am I? I found an incredible PBS documentary that helped put my "digital addiction" in perspective and shattered all my long held assumptions of my great multi-tasking abilities.

In this documentary "Digital Nation" (original air date February 2, 2010) many areas of digital addiction were covered. From Internet gaming addicts in Korea, to Second Life meetings taking over IBM, the entire obsession the world has with being digitally connected was addressed. At first I found the subject of digital dependence slightly amusing. Then I saw the segment on multi-tasking, and the show hit a little too close to home.

The multi-tasking segment discussed the research being conducted by Dr Clifford Nass. Dr Nass is a professor at Stanford University and is the director and founder of Stanford's Communication between Humans and Interactive Media Lab. The current subject of Dr Nass and his colleagues research is whether people who multitask perform better than those who do not. Dr Nass expected that in a world that is so digitally connected and media savvy the multi-tasking group would perform much better in their daily activities.

Dr Nass split the study group into two segments. The high multitasking group was defined as those who do many tasks simultaneously. They are the people who check their email, take notes, watch television and update their Facebook and conduct meeting all at the same time. (I am pretty sure that most of us fall into that category.) The low multitasking group were those people who concentrate on one task at a time.

Dr. Nass and his staff all thought that the high multitasking group may not score well on all the experiments they are conducting, but should score high on some. Dr. Nass and his staff even placed bets on where multitaskers would score. Some thought the multitaskers would be better at ignoring irrelevant information, and others thought they would better at switching from one task to another. What Dr. Nass and his staff discovered surprised them all. When asked about his results Dr. Nass gave the following quote.

"We were absolutely shocked. We all lost our bets. It turns out that multitaskers are terrible at every aspect of multitasking. They're terrible at ignoring irrelevant information; they're terrible at keeping information in their head nicely and neatly organized; and they're terrible at switching from one task to another." (Nass, 2009)

So I guess that was my wake-up call. I have often joked about the only way to separate me from my work BlackBerry would be to pry it from my cold, dead hand. I always assumed that my ability to complete many tasks at once made me a more effective person. I realize now I may not be as effective as I thought I was. I am still in a bit of denial about my multitasking abilities though. Even as I am writing this blog, my television is on and I am instant messaging my sister on Facebook. I guess I truly am addicted to multitasking. There is a bright side to this addiction though, it could be crack...

For anyone interested in viewing the full documentary I have inserted the link below.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/view/

Work Cited:
Dretzin, R. (Director). (2010). PBS Frontline: Digital Nation [Documentary]