Dr. Clifford Nass: Multitasking

Dr. Clifford Nass, a former professor at Stanford university, had warned the world about the disillusion of multitasking and what it is doing to the way we think. This news became prevalent after a study he conducted in 2009, in which he tested students at the university on the skills necessary to be an effective multitasker. These skills included the ability to ignore irrelevant information, switching between various tasks effectively, and having a very organized mind and memory. Although Dr. Nass and his colleagues had predicted that the students who claimed to be frequent multitaskers in their everyday lives would have results indicating that they are advanced in this particular skill set, the study ended up proving the exact opposite. In fact, the research indicates that multitaskers are bad at multitasking and all of the cognitive fundamentals incorporated with multitasking. Dr. Nass came to the conclusion that multitasking is not helping us finish multiple tasks more efficiently, it is only distracting us and our natural flow of critical thinking. He feared that this new age of technology with all of the screens and simultaneous activity going on among each of them, that us humans will constantly be distracted, and that our ways of thinking will become disorganized and detrimental to us in our everyday lives which are getting more and more busy.        I think the results of Dr. Nass' study were logical and that his fears of what this overly busy society will do to our thinking is very reasonable. As humans, we have been given the ability to think critically and accomplish task that require focus. We are engineered to find our own ways of receiving and documenting information into our brains effectively. Unfortunately, multitasking does not allow our brains to decipher information and accomplish tasks to the best of our ability. It deteriorates critical thinking and disorganizes the patterns and connections we make naturally by applying focus to individual tasks/activities. Although it seems that we get a lot done in a short amount of time when multitasking, we were not made to perform at our best when doing so.       As our society has developed, distractions have seemed to become more and more apparent. A major form of distraction in our everyday lives has always been media. People are always interested with what is going on in the world as well as the things that could be labeled "not so important". Today, most media is in digital form, and not only that, this digital media can be viewed from our hands almost anywhere at anytime. This obviously has an effect on multitaskers as they are using and observing these forms of media while accomplishing their tasks and daily routines. Digital media has only added to the disorganization of our thoughts and our ability to focus on tasks one step at a time. Earlier/traditional media seemed to be something that was observed by itself, with no interruptions. For example, a man who would start every morning with a cup of coffee and reading the newspaper. Now people are staying updated while their in class, on their way to work, or even sitting in their offices. People seem to always be "wired" nowadays, never being disconnected from the technological world.      However, multitasking does not have to be looked at as something that is done through technology, it can be categorized as a social skill set as well. In fact, we were the ones who brought multitasking to technology. Multitasking is to take on more than one task/activity simultaneously. So with technology giving us the power of having limitless amounts of knowledge in our hands, ways of accomplishing needs for the day, and jotting down important information that we may have to look back on later, its no wonder we stay so distracted. Things are moving faster and faster as humans are starting to take on more and more. But is moving faster and doing more the best option for us at this point?

Introduction

Hey y'all, I'm Jonnie Mooney. This is my first blog I have ever had. I am a student at Washington State University where I study social sciences and kinesiology. I am taking this class as part of a required course for graduation. When I am not at school I live in Puyallup, Washington where I grew up and spend a lot of my time hanging out with my dog Marley. I enjoy hanging out with my friends, playing video games, and sports. I think this class will be interesting because of how social media is so involved in people's everyday life and its effect on society.