The Multitasking Monster

THIS ARTICLE IS THE THIRD INSTALLMENT of a series loosely grouped under the rubric "Teaching and Learning in the Digital Age," in which I have considered the effects of digital technology on both teaching and learning.1 In order to understand these effects, it was necessary to give an overview of the complex learning process itself, which I explained as a triumvirate of attention, memory, and learning.2 While each of these three abilities possesses singular qualities that can be parsed from the whole and examined separately, they are deeply intertwined. Thus, when one part of the learning triumvirate is compromised, the entire learning journey suffers. And while no one of these components is individually more important than the other two, the attribute of attention must be accorded special recognition as the gatekeeper to learning and memory. The neural substrate of learning, that is, forming ("firing") and keeping ("wiring") new connections between brain cells, depends upon the act of attention as new input is being received by the learner. Learning cannot happen until a person first "attends"-and in the neuroscience of attention, to "attend" means more than just showing up. Within the triumvirate of attention/learning/memory, the attribute of attention must get first dibs, for attention is the prerequisite condition upon which the dynamic dance between memory and learning depends.3 In this column, I will consider the most current challenge to our notoriously fragile human attention spans, and one that is uniquely associated with the digital age: "multitasking." MULTITASKING The term "multitasking" first appeared in the nascent computer technology of the 1960s, but since the advent of the worldwide web in the 1990s, the word was absorbed into the popular lexicon. While multitasking per se has been a part of human activity for millennia (think of hunter-gatherer cultures in which a mother forages for food while simultaneously caring for an infant strapped to her back), the current manifestation of the term "multitasking" specifically signifies the mingling of technology-based tasks: reading email while listening to music, texting while watching television, driving a car while following a GPS and talking on a cell phone-or tweeting comments through a smart phone while attending a concert. As a leading researcher in multitasking describes it, Multitasking as we're studying it here involves looking at multiple media at the same time. So we're not talking about people watching the kids and cooking and stufflike that. We're talking about using information [from] multiple sources.4 Regarding media multitasking among adults, one study estimated that almost one quarter of media use (23.7%) is spent with more than one medium.5 But it is the habit of "media multitasking" among the young-the "Digital Natives"-that has sparked intense concern, raised questions, and inspired the most research on the topic. The Kaiser Family Foundation recently released the third in a series of large-scale, nationally representative surveys concerning media use among young Americans.6 It includes data from all three waves of the study (1999, 2004, and 2009), and is among the largest and most comprehensive publicly available sources of information about media use among American youth. 8-18 year-olds devote an average of 7 hours and 38 minutes (7:38) to using entertainment media across a typical day (more than 53 hours a week). And because they spend so much ofthat time "media multitasking" (using more than one medium at a time), they actually manage to pack a total of 10 hours and 45 minutes (10:45) worth of media content into those 7 ½ hours. The amount of time spent with media increased by an hour and seventeen minutes a day over the past five years, from 6:21 in 2004 to 7:38 today. And because of media multitasking, the total amount of media content consumed during that period has increased from 8:33 in 2004 to 10:45 today. …