A Response to Alina Tugend’s Article
In the article, “Multitasking Can Make You Lose…Um…Focus,” Alina Tugend centralizes around the negative effects of multitasking. She shows that often with multitasking, people tend to lose focus, lack work quality, have an increase in stress, and in the end she gives a solution to all these problems. Tugend conveys her points by using understandable language, a clear division of subjects, and many reliable sources, making her article cogent.
Tugend goes over the impact of interruptions on work. She states that it takes a long time to get refocused after an interruption. Tugend notes that work gets done quicker when a person endures interruptions, but the work quality suffers greatly because of the increase in stress. She states that while other people are interruptions, the biggest interruption is ourselves (Tugend 717). Along with that, human attention spans are decreasing making interruption much more likely to happen. The time people spend on an activity before switching is not enough to really get into it (Tugend 717).
Tugend states that multitasking is ever-increasing with the use of new technologies
…show more content…
While reading through the article, I noticed that the loss of focus she spoke of was happening in my life. I agree that we as a society are trying to become more productive, but multitasking is not the way to go. Tugend mentions that the human brain cannot efficiently handle doing multiple things at once (716). I see this in my daily life when trying to carry two or more items while trying to talk on the phone, it usually ends in disaster. However, multitasking is productive in some ways such as listening to classical music while studying. Tugend does a great job at getting personal with the reader; she uses situations that everyone has been through. Throughout the article, Tugend kept me entertained by switching between a casual and informational
As human beings, it is becoming more of a second nature to us to multi-task. As the world is technologically advancing more and more every day, there are becoming more distractions. Social-media is flourishing, reality TV show ratings are going up, and humans even unintentionally check their phones every two minutes. In this day of age, multi-tasking is proving to promote inefficiency rather than productivity.
In the chapter “Attention Deficit: The Brain Syndrome of Our Era,” from The New Brain, written by Richard Restak, Restak makes some very good points on his view of multitasking and modern technology. He argues that multitasking is very inefficient and that our modern technology is making our minds weaker. Multitasking and modern technology is causing people to care too much what other people think of them, to not be able to focus on one topic, and to not be able to think for themselves.
In the article,“Multitasking is actually kind of a problem for kids and adults” by Hayley Tsukayama the author went into detail about how parents and their children view their personal media habits. One of the ways that the parents and children viewed their media habits as was feeling the need to respond to texts and notifications immediately. “More than 1,200 parents and teens surveyed, 48 percent of parents and 72 percent of teens said they felt the need to respond to texts and notifications immediately, almost guaranteeing distractions throughout the day” (Tsukayama). This article can be connected to “The Epidemic of Media Multitasking While Learning” both of the articles discussed the different factors of media multitasking among individuals. The article from The Washington Post website gave great insight on multitasking and rather it is bad for students when it comes to learning. I believe that the issue being discussed is very relevant because if students are easily distracted by technology while in their learning environment it results in them not learning
Technology and our exposure to it are changing our lives; of this there is no doubt. The issue regarding what form that change will take and the effects of it on our physical and emotional health, however, are more contentious, and experts’ opinions on it run the gamut. In “Attention Deficit: The Brain Syndrome of our Era”, neurologist Dr. Richard Restak examines what effect technology has on our brains, and posits that technology, as well as the increasing demand on our brains to perform multiple tasks at once, is causing a decrease
Technological advances though have been moving fast and some people would argue that it is too much for our brains to handle. As Restak states in his essay,” This technologically driven change in the brain is the biggest modification in the last 200,000 years (when the brain volume of Homo sapiens reached the modern level).” Our brains are experiencing a change in how it functions, and this last quote by Restak shows just how different the human brain has became since our last change in evolution. One of the changes that are forced on our brain is that of multitasking and when we are faced with the ability to focus our attention. Restak shows an example in a situation where there are crawlers at the bottom of a television screen. He comments how he could not keep focus on what he was watching and kept on looking at the words that were at the bottom of the screen because they were made to catch your attention. Another example is that of split screen interviews, which makes us divide our visual attention. With all of this we have become more high strung and our brains function have changed for the better. Restak would call this as us being more hyperactive, where we are now more frenetic, more distracted, and more fragmented. Yet all of this would be for the better for our species. The technology is only going the
Rosen stated that “how do we teach focus in a world that is constantly drawing our attention elsewhere? One strategy that we are using in classrooms around the world is called “technology break.” He explained that this strategy work by teachers leading students check their social media, messages, emails, or text only for a minute after that they have to turn their phones silent and facing down ,and work for fifteen minutes after the 15 minutes had pass they repeat the process again. I guess this strategy is all about controlling anxiety which is what really cause the used of technology. I really don’t believe we can teach people to focus in more important things than elsewhere because this is all about using and adjusting to technology the right way. If people were to have more activities outside their home and school, there would be a very huge number of people using less and less technology this
Students may easily lose their attention and concentration with easy access to such incredibly rich store of information. With such new technologies as television, internet and social networks, people nowadays tend to multitask more often as they have easy access to a large amount of information. However, such easy access may sometimes be a distraction. Study “Your Brain on Computers” reports that heavy multitaskers perform up to 20% worse on most tests compared to performance of light multitaskers. Working efficiency of people, who multitask, is claimed to be significantly lower. The same is with concentration. (Crovitz 353) As a result, they are not engaged in working process. Students tend to be easily distr...
Technology is prevalent in our personal and professional lives. Everywhere we go; there are multiple screens and multiple distractions. How is productivity when being inundated with information and devices? There seems to be some bragging rights associated with multitasking, however many would argue the opposite. The following examines how multitasking negatively influences personal and professional productivity and how we should make changes to reduce digital distractions.
People live in a society that encourages getting as many things done as quickly as possible. Whether they realize it or not, multitasking as become a part of their everyday lives. They perform multiple tasks at the same time in order to save time. They use multiple electronics to take more in all at once. Multitasking can seem to be the more efficient way to handle things because people can spend the same amount of time on several tasks as opposed to just one. However, they do not stop to think of the amount of effort it takes the multitask and the consequences that can come along with it. Several experiments have been performed to determine just how detrimental multitasking can be. Attempting any form of multitasking
Though being exposed to technologies like computers from an early age may have given us the ability to do things more efficiently, technology has also made us less dependent on ourselves. Claudia Wallis, editor for Time, in her article makes known in The Multitasking Generation, “That level of multiprocessing and interpersonal connectivity is now so commonplace that it’s easy to forget how quickly it came about. Fifteen years ago, most home computers weren’t even linked to the Internet” (63). There are many things that students are able to do on their computer that their parents aren't even aware of or that the parents couldn’t do themselves. My parents always tell of how looking through the library’s card catalog and searching for the books they needed only to find out that they have been taken out. Computers have allowed us to do many things faster for example, write much faster than a typewriter or pen and paper and correct typing errors without starting over. The computers and technology we now have makes it easier to almost anything and with technology so easily at your fingertips it o...
Since the Industrial Revolution, technology has become an essential tool in human life. Technology impacted lives in society by offering a way to “multitask” by using two or more technological devices. Technology and internet offers the facility to do homework faster through Google, while listening to music on Pandora or YouTube. Sometimes, you can even talk on the phone while you listen to music and do homework. All you need in order to multitask is to have all the technological devices needed. Many people consider technology as a positive change in our lives, because of the facilities it offers us. However, many other persons, like Christine Rosen, think that technology instead of improving our lives, it has only changed it negatively. Technology, in fact has provided us with many facilities, however such facilities are affecting our interactions with the physical space.
Works Cited Davies, Frances. A. “The dangers of multitasking: numerous studies have shown that human beings are not designed to handle multiple tasks and this applies to undertaking multiple roles in the workplace as much as in our daily lives. Frances Davies, chairman of Principle People, explains the dangers of multitasking.” Plant & Works Engineering Jan. 2009: 39+. General OneFile.
The presence of accumulated stress and heavy work load on the brain automatically bring about the student or the employee inability to multitask; knowing fully well that multitasking is one essential key to excellence.
Technology has completely changed the culture of this world. We live in a world where our lives are constantly in motion because of portable devices. Different forms of technology have changed the way and the places that information is accessed. Fast entertainment is now the center of everyone's day. Mostly everything in our lives has something to do with entertainment. We are all seeking and craving entertainment all throughout the day just like fast food. Reading the article “Fast Entertainment and Multitasking in an Always-on World” by S. Craig Watkins, he share his views about multitasking with technology and the unlimited access to fast entertainment. People always feel the need to be connected and get their few minutes of media for the day, with technology being more accessible, more people are media consuming, and the youths are accessing the media more often and tend to access multiple things at once.
The impact of technology on our individual lives and culture has been a general issue of our time. In her essay “In the Beginning Was the Word,” Christine Rosen analyzes the effects of the image-dominated modern society and its influence on our daily lives, as well our comprehension skills of complex literature acquired through the years of human history. In “Three Tweets for the Web” Tyler Cowan analyzes the effects of a new cultural medium of our society and its effectiveness on multitasking as well as increasing intellectual satisfaction of our highly literal modern society. Rosen and Cowan both present the evidence that our society is in a midst of a culture transition, and printed world is being a less central part of our lives. This cultural transition affects our daily activities in many ways; such as, stimulating distractions, duration of attention span and our efficiency at multitasking.