Technology is becoming more and more accessible at more and more places, making it easier and easier to multitask. The documentary Digital Nation talked about how multitasking can be making us dumber or just more ready for a fast paced world. The interview from Frontline with Clifford Nass, Life on the Virtual Frontier talks all about multitasking and how it is not really effective.
In colleges people are using their laptops instead of notebooks nowadays; even some of the teachers are becoming more tech savvy. Digital nation said this could be a way of adapting to this fast paced world we all live in. Nass says in his interview that the students who are not multitasking would be the ones who are good at it. They’re the ones who are ready for the world we live in.
In both the documentary and interview it talked about how multitasking can possibly be making the world dumber. Nass even clearly states, “we could be essentially dumbing down the world.” He did an experiment on multitasking. Everyone failed it. They couldn’t ignore irrelevant information like Nass and his colleagues had hypothesized. They were also bad at keeping information organized in their heads. From this experiment we can understand that multitasking is not a good way to get things accomplished the correct way; it may get them done but not efficiently.
We can all learn a little something from watching this documentary and reading this interview. Although, multitasking could perhaps be preparing us for the fast paced world, more data shows that it is only making us dumber. The digital world we are living in is causing us to multitask making us do our work not to the full potential we could if we were doing only one task at a time. We need to stop multitasking but technology is making it harder to do this. There has to be a way…
