Practicing Synthesizing Sources For My Research Paper about the Evils of Multitasking

In the past, people had little technology available to them. There were no computers, there was no television, and there were no cell phones. Those were the days of the one room school house. Now the children of today watch television while chatting, downloading MP3’s, and browsing for a new instant message avatar all at the same time. Is the constant multitasking of today’s technological environment making children smarter, or is it negatively affecting children? How is this constant multi-tasking affecting the current generation of human beings? When I started my research, I believed that the effects were positive, but after looking at the scientific data and rethinking the issue I’m not so sure. What do people really gain from multitasking? Are they getting smarter? Are they more productive? According to many studies, the answer is “no.”

There have traditionally been two theories that explain how the brain processes two things at once: “passive queuing” and “active monitoring”. With “active monitoring”, the brain would be able to do two things at a time because it would develop its own complicated mechanism that would keep the things it is doing separate from each other. With “passive queuing”, the brain would only be able to focus on one thing at a time. Recent studies and experiments done at MIT indicate that the brain only focuses on one thing at a time. Even though a person may be doing many things at once, the brain can only line up each of those tasks individually and focus on one of them (Jiang et al. 390-396).

Even if the brain is only focusing on one task at a time, multitasking could still be positive because maybe people are getting more done. Perhaps people are completing more tasks than they were in the past, or are taking less time to do a series of tasks. Recent studies done by the Federal Aviation Commission in coordination with the University of Michigan prove that this is not the case. These studies were completed to examine the effects of multitasking on productivity. During the study, subjects at several different age levels, including one as young as twelve years old, were forced to switch back and forth between a specified number of tasks. It was found that in every single case no matter what the task was and whether it was simple or complicated, time was always lost in switching between tasks. Also, as the complexity of the tasks grew, the time lost in switching between them became greater(Rubenstein et al.). The study has had a very big impact on how multitasking is viewed in regard to workplace productivity. People are actually less productive when they multitask…

Jiang, Yuhong, Rebecca Saxe, and Nancy Kanwisher. "Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Provides New Constraints on Theories of the Psychological Refractory Period." Psychological Science June 4 2004: 390-396.
Rubenstein, Joshua S., David E. Meyers, and Jeffrey E. Evans. "Executive Control of Cognitive Processes in Task Switching." Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 27 (2001). 24 Mar 2006 .