Written by Nima, 2021 Cohort
You check your phone when you wake up, use it while you are in the washroom, always look at it when commuting and constantly keep an eye on it while at work. For most people, the last thing they look at before falling asleep is their phone screen. It has become routine of our daily lives and there are very few people who really step back to see the real impact of these behaviours on our body and mind.
When you are working on different digital devices you are constantly switching from one context to another, back to back. In the very first stages, mobile devices were designed for mostly verbal communication between people. But constantly the abilities of these small devices improved and for now, work-related emails, personal instant messages, social media posts, news, entertainment, and all became mixed together in a shape of a constant stream of beeps, pings, and flashing notification icons and sounds.
Over the last two decades, people have looked into many strategies to adapt to fast-moving communication and digital tools. Researches at Stanford University have reached a very notable peak: are people who juggle media like this better at switching tasks than people who don’t? Do heavy media multitaskers process information differently from light media multitaskers? It seems like repeated multitasking can train your brain to switch more successfully between cognitive tasks.
On the other hand, there were more discoveries in this research that showed people who are high media multitaskers are surprisingly worse in task switching. They are also more easily distracted by information that is not related to the task at hand. The main reason researchers come up with is that high media multitaskers are more likely to pay attention more broadly than low media multitaskers. Their brain continuously monitors the environment for hints. These hints are mostly hard for them to filter and most of the time they switch anyway from one task to a different one.
To conclude, there are many controversies about whether digital enhancements are helping people to become more successful multitaskers or not. Furthermore, there is still uncertainty about the long-term impact of digital device use on cognition. Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist emphasizes the importance of being immersed in tasks that generate a sense of progress. These tasks help with daily satisfaction and motivation. But for many people, such diving in tasks is unreachable when their minds start to reflect the confusion made of their social media feeds.