Essay on Multitasking

As technology gets more advanced everyday, we are almost forced to be dependent on it. Being dependent is one thing but being so dependent that we are constantly connected not only to one source of technological information but many, is something else. Many people argue that multitasking makes them more efficient, saves them time, but really what are the true effects of multitasking on the human brain? The documentary Digital Nation and the article of interviews on multitasking conduct experiments on multitasking and the results they obtain are shocking.

            The documentary, a lot of the time focuses on college students because they seem to be the ones who are most connected most of the time, either on their laptops or on their phones, and are processing more than one source of information simultaneously. College kids seem to be able to do homework while having conversations on Facebook along with other websites open and active. However, it is not only college students who multitask on a daily basis, as the article states, “But obviously the world is changing, and more and more people, especially young people, but even older people are becoming multitaskers…we’re in a world where multitasking is being pushed on more and more people,” This fact is a concern for some scientist who study the brain because of the results they obtained during the experiments on multitaskers. On the article of interviews people said that they multitask because they don’t have time to do one thing at a time, so this way they save time. While this theory might sound logical, studies have proved that the brain is not meant for multitasking. Both, the documentary and the written article shared information about the experiments they performed on various people to reveal the true impact of multitasking. The goal of the experiment was to see how efficiently could a person’s brain could shift from one task to another by showing the person a letter or a number and having them press the key for if the letter is a vowel or a consonant and another set of keys for if the number shown is either odd or even. The results were extremely different from what the scientists and professors were expecting and they have raised serious concerns about the future of our nation.

            The article about interviews and the documentary have very similar thoughts about the multitasking issue, and they both come down to the same conclusion. Studies and experiments showed that the human brain is not meant for multitasking and that is actually damaging for the brain and can have long term effects on the individual. One of the scientists that conducted the experiments stated, “It turns multitaskers are terrible at every aspect of multitasking,” The experiments showed that when multitasking people are actually significantly slower than when they are focused on a single task. While people believe that they are good at multitasking, they have a hard time believing that they are not good at all and that it is actually bad for them. Both, the documentary and the written article on interviews reveal that multitasking caused people to be easily distracted and also caused them to have difficulty focusing. Multitasking has more negative effects that expected. Multitaskers get distracted constantly; they are very disorganized when it comes keeping their memory in order, and also have a deficiency with short term memory, but the most concerning on is the one that shows that multitaskers are bad at analytical reasoning, which is a extremely valuable skill in school and life situations, those are fundamental skills that are being lost because of something that is still thought to be beneficial.

            Above were the most significant effects of multitasking. Clearly, the brain is not meant to switch tasks and still be expected to perform well. Both sources of information used share the same opinions and findings about this spreading issue. While both sources admit that stopping multitasking is impossible they are both concern about the problems that it might bring for future generations. Multitasking at first glance might seem beneficial because it might help be faster and efficient but the human brain is not made for that kind of stress, even when the human body and mind might think it is.