'Suckers for the irrelevant'

This week, we contemplate an important existential question of the modern age: Is reading in the bathroom considered multi-tasking? Probably, but it will not cause brain damage the way multi-tasking using “media” such as gaming, chatting sending e-mail, texting or even watching TV would if you are doing all these things at the same time.

I listened to a radio interview on Science Friday at npr.org with a scientist who found that while you think the cyber-age has enabled us to multi-task, it apparently does not translate to accomplishing anything. Dr. Clifford Nass, the scientist I heard and also one of the authors of a recent study on the effects of multi-tasking on our mental abilities lives in a dorm with students in Stanford. He said he has observed how kids are engaged in doing various media tasks at one time — watching YouTube, writing a paper on the computer, chatting, and texting — and wondered why he cannot do that kind of multi-tasking. He wondered if these kids had any special gifts that he did not have. So in pursuit of the “talent” he may be missing, his colleagues, Eyal Ophir and Anthony Wagner performed a study to test whether indeed multi-tasking actually get tasks done. The study is entitled “Cognitive control in media multi-taskers” and was published last Aug. 24 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

I should qualify that the “multi-tasking” they studied referred to “media multi-taskers.” These are the ones who have become octopuses in the way they engage with the information age — they try to juggle unrelated things all at once. The “media” in the study refer to the following: cyber or print media, television, computer-based video (such as YouTube or online television episodes), music, non-music audio, video or computer games, telephone and mobile phone voice calls, instant messaging, SMS (text messaging), e-mail, Web surfing, and other computer-based applications (such as word processing).

The study does NOT refer to our everyday multi-engagement in the real world — like what is required when we have to assume our Swiss knife selves to clean our homes, take care of the kids, play many musical instruments, or listen to lectures while taking notes. One caller even asked Dr. Nass if there was a difference between men and women with multi-tasking. Dr. Nass said that in multi-tasking media, there was no difference. But he said that in real world multi-tasking, there really is mounting evidence that women are better than men at shuffling tasks.

The study subjected the heavy multi-taskers to tests involving major aspects of how our minds learn and the results were not good. Two-hundred sixty-two subjects were asked to answer a questionnaire which reflected the degree to which they multi-tasked in various media. Then they were classified according to whether they were heavy multi-taskers or did it much less. The verdict came in three blows. First, the heavy multi-taskers did poorly at filtering which meant the ability to ignore what is just “noise” and has no bearing on the task at hand. Second, the heavy multi-taskers had seriously compromised the way they are able to access and make use of their working memory. Lastly, these same multi-taskers were even slower than the occasional multi-taskers in shifting from one task to another. The last one surprised the scientist as they thought that greater speed would at least be the claim that would be validated by the study. Media-multitasking then does not make you smart or efficient; in fact, it keeps you in a state of perpetual exploration to keep on getting information from various media. This, Dr. Nass said, is in contrast with “exploiting” or “processing” which is what you should be doing to actually get beyond the information to meaning.

Dr. Nass said he was frightened because these tests were done to the subjects not even while they were media multitasking. It means heavy media multitasking slows our ability to winnow the music from mere “noise” even when we are no longer doing e-mail, texting and watching TV all at once. He even called them “suckers for the irrelevant” which I thought was curious because I have a video-documentary given to me on octopuses called The Incredible Suckers.

He said the next thing that his colleagues are looking at is what actually happens to the brain of multi-taskers when they are engaged in multi-tasking. Do pleasure centers of our brains light up when we engage the world in various media, receiving a barrage of information all at once. If not for pleasure, then why do we seem to fall hostage to media multi-tasking when the cost seems to be greater in terms of our ability to learn things in depth?

Over 40 years ago, when color television has yet to be widespread, my favorite historians, Ariel and Will Durant wrote in their chapter entitled “Is Progress Real?” (The Lessons of History, 1968): “We double, triple, centuple our speed but we shatter our nerves in the process and are the same trousered apes at two thousand miles an hour as when we had legs.”

Now in the first decade of the 21st century, enabled to have distinct chats with 15 contacts on Instant Messaging, 1,500 friends on Facebook and Twitter all at once, we are told that reading in the bathroom offers a far more intellectual space for growth. Maybe it is a good time to ask ourselves the same question as the Durants did: Is progress real?

* * *

For comments, e-mail [email protected]