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Long-Term Effects Of Multitasking

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So what exactly is the result of our brains receiving so many different types of stimuli all at once? What are the long term effects of multitasking? In Is Google Making Us Stupid, Nicholas Carr includes a study conducted by scholars from the University College of London that sheds some light onto a resulting phenomenon. According to Carr, they examined computer logs that recorded the behaviors of visitors to two specific websites that provided access to journals, magazines and books. These scholars discovered something that was prevalent amongst all of the site-goers: skimming. They found that people had a certain tendency to quickly skim over passages and jump from site to site (2). The evidence shows that our reading skills are heavily impacted …show more content…

This is a clear indication that kids nowadays aren’t able to store long term memories as much as they used to. One reason is an overload of information. Have you ever visited a website which showcases a wide range of colors, pictures, hyperlinks and videos? One might argue that such websites hold our attention far better than one with plain text because they make the content interesting and fun. Sure, it is visually appealing to look at and that is where the real problem resides. Adolescents who are presented with these kinds of websites have too much information bombarded at them. Instead of focusing on the text presented to them, their mind alternates between all the different information. One might ask how exactly does this affect memory? Nicholas Carr uses a valuable example to explain this in The Web Shatters focus, Rewires Brain. He says, “Imagine filling a bathtub with a thimble; that’s the challenge involved in moving working memory into long-term memory…on the net, we face many information faucets, all going full speed. Our little thimble overflows from tap to tap. We transfer only a small jumble of drops from different faucets, not a continuous, coherent stream” (3). I wholeheartedly agree with the comparison that Carr makes. Because our minds are trying to move from information to information to take it all in, we get bits of pieces of information from too many different sources. There are too many things jumbled up together with a very limited amount of logical flow to it, hence, our brain becomes unable to store all the information as long term

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“It is logical to begin with skimming activities because “moving from the general to the specific….. allows students to get a feel for what they are seeing…. before they attack the text in detail. (Harmer, J, 270,

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In Nicholas Carr’s article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, he claims that the Internet is affecting the way humans process information. Carr expresses that the Internet is significantly decreasing our ability to concentrate and process thoughts for an extensive period of time. He believes this is because of our large dependence on the Internet. Carr is able to connect with this idea as he feels that, like other Internet users, his cognitive behavior has changed. He determined that his way of processing information has transformed as he has made a habit of merely skimming the text and not stopping to analyze and take in the information that he is reading.

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In his article, Is Google Making Us Stupid?, the author Nicholas Carr describes the many ways the use of search engines have on our comprehension. He writes, “The more they use the Web , the more they have to fight to focused on long pieces of writing”(Carr). Most people who often searched the Web, limit themselves from actually learning. For example, googling questions to find answers quicker than actually reading the text limits one's knowledge. Maryanne Wolf, a Tufts University cognitive neuroscientist also stated that search engines is affecting the way we read and write.

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According to the prominent pathologist Bruce Friedman, admitted, “I’ve lost the ability to do that. Even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it.” Carr cites a few studies of internet behavior that is influencing our brain to lack concentration. He proves

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People today seem to only read a page or two in a book or article before they move on to the next website. Only reading one or two pages has a disadvantage, their concentration starts to drift after only two

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Because time is being filled with short-term stimulation—during which brief tidbits of knowledge can be gained with minimal effort—rather than the long-term stimulation from books and print, people’s brains are being retrained to think in short bursts rather than fully developed ideas when speaking or planning. Games, texting, blog posts, and hyperlinks have begun to take over our time reducing interest in in-depth learning or prolonged research. These changes in the way people think are leading to an overall decrease in attention span, even in adults who at one point in time would claim that they had a sufficient attention

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A Deeper Understanding of Technology Technology advances everyday around the world. From the nerd’s favorite Microsoft Windows to the geek’s beloved Apple, we have entered a new age of technology - Internet and computing. But technology is a double edged sword; it can provide the user an enormous amount of resources in merely a second, but it can also devour one’s valuable time in just a blink of an eye from ads, popups, social media etc. And for a long time, it has become important to ask exactly how does the advance of technology affect modern society? Nicholas Carr, author of “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” argues that as we make the Internet our primary knowledge, it begins to devour our mental capability and diminish our learning experience.

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I usually start drifting after reading two to three pages. Nowadays reading and interpreting has become a real struggle for me. I have regrets for not being able to concentrate on reading for long hours and for not understanding the articles or paragraphs clearly. On the other hand, I also believe that we have been benefited from the internet too.

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In my references I stumble upon various results of experiments that authors mention in their work and those results stated some of the consequences the brain faces after multitasking. Eric Jaffe (2012) shows how our brains are being rewired when we multitask with technology and how it’s nowadays harder for us to finish one single task in a reasonable time. Another results from the investigations is that very time the brain is forced to multitask it uses a vast amount of his nutrients leaving the person exhausted and with no energy only after a short period of time. My sources reveal that multitasking in general is bad, but when combined with technology it becomes dangerous. It has been scientifically proven that multitasking leaves us stressed,

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Reading isn’t just skimming through what you

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Although Melissa claims that she did not see the stop sign, it is possible to describe the path of visual sensation involved in seeing the stop sign. We must first begin by tracing the path of light through the eye. Light rays enter the eye through the cornea. The cornea “bends light waves so that the image can be focused on the retina” (Baird 73).

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Although this phenomenon has a lot of similarity with transactive memory, it also presents a big difference from it: Internet is completely different from any real person we can rely on for information: it knows everything and it is constantly present to give us help. Thus, a smartphone can provide a lot more information that a single individual or group can remember. The speed at which we can access information from the Internet is much faster than the one that takes a human brain to look for something from its own memory. The rapidity that takes to have access to anything is now blurring the boundaries between the limited and personal human memory and the depth of the digital storage. The information age is making humans splitting their memories between the brain and the digital devices, making people seem like they know more than ever before, while they remember ever less about the world as they think.

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I get very distracted, I often have to stop whatever I’m doing and just day dream or I get lost in my phone. I also learned I shouldn't write multiple essays at once with the television on, that only blocks my creativity. The brain, like any other muscle, can get taxed due to multitasking switching between tasks and making multiple decisions might tire your brain to an expanse that a person might end up being a poor or less-effective decision maker. Multitasking can be a waste of time, and multitasking increases one stress levels, and anxiety.

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The previous experimental findings evidence a very high cor-relation between fixation on a displayed stimulus and exact thoughts about this stimulus. In addition, the fixation duration on certain items directly links to the degree of cognitive processing (Just & Carpenter, 1980). Depending from the type of displayed information, the possible differences in fixation duration can be explained by the time and speed required to absorb the information. While the eye moves rapidly during reading, in visual search a participant typically grasps key information from certain regions which supports the idea of using heuristics in information processing (Sullivan et al., 2012). Research on eye movements in reading proposes that fixation durations extend with the complexity of the text (Rayner, Pollatsek, Ashby, & Clifton, 2012).

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Fragmented reading can help college students filter the information and get what we want. That is why college students are now reading in a fragmented manner. According to a survey (李熠、谢宇、孙小花, 2015) on the one hand, about ninety percent of college students do fragmented reading every day. On the other hand, about fifty-six percent of college students do traditional reading less than one hour.

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