INTRODUCTION In today’s society, technology use has increased rapidly, and the need for multitasking correlates with that. Multitasking is the ability to perform well at two or more jobs at the same time (Van der Horst et al. 434). Technology is ever growing, and the ability to multitask has become more apparent. The need to understand multitasking has only recently become a topic of importance (Van der Horst et al. 434). Van der Horst mentions that with the quantity of technologies people have access to like email, instant messaging, and smart phones, people deal with multiple sources of information at once all the time (Van der Horst et al. 434). On average, people spend three minutes on a task and when technology is involved, only two …show more content…
There has been a decrease of fatal crashes in the United States, but at the same time, there has been an increase in fatal crashes from distracted drivers (Lim and Chi 198). A study was done at North Dakota State University where states that banned handheld cellphone usage while driving was compared to its statistics before the ban was implemented, along with other states without the ban (Lim and Chi 199). Lim and Chi say the primary source of their data came from The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, who keeps track of the annual fatal injuries in motor vehicles across the nation (Lim and Chi 199-200). Lim and Chi also looked at age groups as a category of determining cell phone usage (Lim and Chi 201). The main factors observed for this study were the age distribution of drivers and number of drivers per 100,000 drivers involved in fatal crashes during the year 2010 (Lim and Chi …show more content…
With the first claim, multitasking decreased task performance. 96% of the participants performed better on the single task compared to multitasking (Lin et al. 315). The second claim showed that the usage of cell phones increased chances of a fatal car crash. After examining the data, it showed that states with a cell phone ban while driving had a 26% lower fatality rate (Lim and Chi 208). The last claim portrayed how cell phones decreased focus on tasks. The results showed that multitasking with cell phones did lead to lower GPA’s (Bellur et al.
Over the past two decades the use of cell phones has grown significantly and statistic from the past two years have proven that driving while on the phone or texting is becoming one of the leading causes of traffic accidents today. In 2011, a survey of more than 2800 American adults revealed that even thought they know that using a cell phone or texting while driving is distracting, they do it anyway, and teens surveyed admit that texting while driving is their number one distraction. "Each year, 21% of fatal car crashes involving teenagers between the ages of 16 and 19 were the result of cell phone usage. This result has been expected to grow as much as 4% ...
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.
Another negative effect that mobile phones impair is mental focus while driving. People who are driving have their minds on the task in front of them with their full attention on the road. So when a person is conversing on a phone their attention is split as he or she is trying to multi-task both talking and driving at the same time. An article written by Nathan Seppa, the cause of “split attention”, he noted that David Strayer a psychology professor and his team studied to understand what impairs drivers when they talk on the phone. They conducted an experiment with drivers to see the effects of how varies distractions compare to each other. Strayer’s team accompanied drivers and assign them different distractive tasks while they maintain their eyes on the road in order to assess the effects. In the team’s findings they found that one most distracting tasks was talking on a mobile phone, which caused a driver’s performance to decline significantly. The typical tasks that drivers should perform on a regular basis, such as observing traffic changes, looking in rear-view mirrors, and watching for pedestrians was reduced overall (Seppa). Not many people can multi-task a conversation and driving at the same time without some drawbacks. Another drawback to a person focus was “unintentional blindness”, described by Simons, as “looking at something and not seeing it” (Seppa). So a person who is talking on a phone can end up not seeing an object whether it is a car, a stop sign or a pedestrian that is right in front of him and her. Many experiments were conducted by professionals to understand how “unintentional blindness” can affect a person’s perception, but one notable professional, Simmons, conducted a test of this concept:
Distracted driving is such an increasing problem in the U.S. that there are laws against driving distracted. In New Jersey there is a handheld ban for all drivers and that is a primary law. There is a ban on all cell phone use (handheld and hands-free) for novice drivers. There is also a ban on texting for all drivers. This problem Is growing, drivers who are texting are 23.2 times more likely to get into a crash than people who aren’t (Cell Phones and Texting). Every driver takes their eyes off the road for approximately 4.6 seconds when texting. Driving is a new skill for teens, so doing multiple things simultaneously takes more effort for them than for more experienced drivers. Texting and driving can ruin families because when texting and driving there is a higher chance of getting in a crash. There are only 2 percent of people who can actually multitask successfully. Even though teens are more likely to try multitasking they are still part of the 98 percent who can’t do it safely. For example, Nebraska teen Emily Reynolds says...
According to Stephanie Hanes in the essay “Texting While Driving Is as Dangerous as Drunk Driving,” a driver on a phone and those talking on a phone are four times likely to crash. This statistic shows how dangerous using the phone or even texting is while driving. As technology has increased, so has the use of cellphone. Distracted driving has caused an increase in car fatalities and disasters. However, distracted driving can be prevented if drivers take precautions, but no matter what we do, trouble will always be spelling on the road.
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.
Most people think of someone using their cell phone while driving when they hear distracted driving, but it it much more than that. Distracted driving is when someone who is behind the wheel get distracted by either taking their hands off the wheel or take their mind of driving, which can cause them to get into an accident (paragraph 2). Distracted driving is broken down into three main parts, manual distractions which is taking your hands off the steering wheel, visual distractions which is taking your center of attention off the road and cognitive distraction which is when your mind is not focused on driving and just starts drifting away (paragraph 3). Cell phone use is easily the biggest cause of distracted driving compared to eating, talking, and others because using your cell phone requires visual, manual and cognitive attention from the person behind the wheel and in a study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Association, the amount of people who break the law and use a handheld device behind the wheel increases every single year. An estimated amount of more than, six hundred thousand people use their phone while driving. Distracted driving has quickly risen and developed in the past few years and is becoming an enormous problem. In a recent study, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), showed statistics of approximately three thousand, one hundred fifty
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.
Multitasking requires that a worker divides his/her time and energy on multiple tasks at the same time. As a result, the care and attention to detail is divided. The amount of focus that could be used to review one assignment is split. In an experiment, Patterson (2017) discovered that students who studied while participating in media multitasking took longer to complete tasks in their classes. This experiment addresses media multitasking in the case of students. While it is not a type of multitasking we normally consider, it does involve performing multiple tasks at one. Instead of putting all of their focus on their assignments, these students’ attention is on the assignment and on their social media. The results of the experiment prove that it when placed in scenarios where people are required to focus on multiple things, it takes more time to complete certain tasks. In this instance, media multitasking caused a decrease in performance. In another experiment, Paridon and Kaufmann (2010) made an observation when studying multitasking in the workplace, stating that people’s reaction time diminished when multiple tasks were completed at once. The believe that multitasking affects people’s performance has also been proven to be true in the workplace, as the speed of people’s production when down when required to complete multiple tasks. Performance can be determined by the speed in which a task is completed.
“BREAKING NEWS, yet another driver dies from the distraction of texting while driving”. These stories are constantly on the news and seem to be inevitable. Car accidents are the leading cause of teen deaths in the United States combining with inexperience and distractions, such as texting while driving. No state bans all cell phone use for all drivers. Driving and the technology we have today are not a good combination, and there are phone applications and devices to prevent this conflict. “Over 16,000 people die each year and with the increase of technology in people’s daily lives this number is only going to increase”. More and more people die each day from the effect of texting while driving, it is time for the United States government to take a stronger stand and regulate more laws to reduce this number.
This paper examines the dangers that arise when cell phones are used at the same time as operating a vehicle. The paper will explore the following question of why this is a problem and why the research is important. The variables investigated are the use of cell phones while driving, whether speaking or texting, and the accidents and fatalities caused from the distraction. Data of the accidents and fatalities caused by drivers distracted by their cells phones is stated to research and further explores the age group and gender of the people involved into the accidents to uncover patterns. Possible outcomes of the implementation of laws prohibiting cell phone use while driving are discussed as well as the sampling measures used to survey and research the variables.
Today we live in a society where everything is seconds away from us. With the advances and affordability of quality technology, you would be hard pressed to find someone without a smartphone, laptop, or tablet, possibly all at the same time. Because of the accessibility we find that, in our tech-savvy culture, multitasking has not just become an art form of sorts, but rather an expectation. In the article “Multitasking Can Make You Lose…Um…Focus,” Alina Tugend sets out to explore the idea that although multitasking appears to show productivity, it could be doing the opposite. Throughout her article, Tugend uses studies done by neurologists and psychologists to show how in a world that sees multitasking as an expectation it has actually made us less efficient. She proposes, through studies, that although you might be working on multiple tasks it is as if you’re playing tennis with multiple balls (Tugend, 725).
Not only does it put the driver of the car in danger, but it also puts the passengers and the surrounding cars at risk. Using a cell phone while driving has been proven to be just as dangerous as driving under the influence. At any given moment during the day, around 800,000 people are driving cars while using a hand-held device, which unfortunately puts everyone else at risk of a car crash. In the recent year, 21% of fatal car crashes involved the use of a cellular device (Prof. David J. Hanson, 1997-2015). Unfortunately, humans, especially teenagers, cannot put down their cell phones while they drive due to the many notifications they receive. They are addicted. This points back to how the cell phones are affecting the mental health of humans. In 2007, Bailey Goodman, a seventeen-year-old, was killed along with four of her friends in a car accident. Goodman
Technology has always been improving over the decades, and now it has improved to the point where it’s a part of a human being’s life. People can’t imagine living without technology anymore nowadays, and especially college students who are always on their phones and laptops during lectures. That leads to what is known as multitasking, which is the ability to take care of more than one task at the same time. Multitasking has been popularized by students, and specifically college students, who think that they are actually successful at doing it. Unfortunately, according to Digital Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier, after testing students who think they are brilliant at multitasking, results showed that they are terrible at every aspect of multitasking; consequently, it is not successful.
Texting while driving is a widespread epidemic in the United States that has unfavorable effects on our society.“Driving while texting is the standard wording used for traffic violations” (Bernstein). It causes many people to be distracted which can lead to accidents. “Eighty-nine percent of people own a cell phone” (Gardner). That is a plethora of people that are at risk of texting while driving. Also, texting has increased by ten times in three years(Bernstein). “The risk of a crash for those who are texting is twenty-three point two times greater than those who are not” (Gardner).Driving drunk only makes a person seven times more likely to be in a crash (Bernstein). This means texting while driving is three times more dangerous than driving intoxicated. One in five drivers admits to texting while driving(Gardner). This shows that that texting while driving is a widespread epidemic. When a survey asked teenagers whether they text and drive,“seventy five percent of teens admitted to texting while driving” (7).Distracted driving causes seventy-eight percent of car crashes(Bernstein). “No distraction causes as high of a risk of an accident as texting while driving” (Gardner). Also with these statistics, it is not hard to understand why accidents in teenagers that are driving have risen. The Bluetooth capability in cars gives a driver a hands-free way to talk on the phone, but is still not completely safe (8). Also, only 1 out of 3 US cars sold in 2009 had this feature. New systems are being developed that will use Bluetooth as well a global positioning technology to allow parents to monitor cell phone use and texting while driving (10).