Media multitaskers—those of you that juggle instant messages, text messages, emails and Web sites all while watching TV—are paying a mental price, according to researchers at Stanford.
Stanford prof Clifford Nass, one of the researchers on the project, put 100 students through a series of media juggling tests and found that multitaskers are “suckers for irrelevancy.”
According to a Stanford report (Techmeme):
Social scientists have long assumed that it’s impossible to process more than one string of information at a time. The brain just can’t do it. But many researchers have guessed that people who appear to multitask must have superb control over what they think about and what they pay attention to.
Turns out there’s no gift. Multitaskers don’t excel at anything. Multitaskers were frequently distracted. Simply put, media multitaskers couldn’t ignore anything. They were mired in noise.
The lesson: Try one thing at a time. Life is easier that way.
