Chang W. Lee/The New York Times Kord Campbell, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, has multiple computer screens set up in his home office.Updated, June 8, 7:20 a.m. | Russell A. Poldrack, a neurobiologist, joins the discussion and says that multitasking can have an insidious effect on learning, particularly in children. But Timothy B. Lee of Princeton argues that the Internet can improve social interactions.
In the first article of a Times series, “Your Brain on Computers,” Matt Richtel profiles a family, the Campbells, who are tethered to e-mail, BlackBerrys, iPads and other electronic devices. The constant use of digital media seems to be taking a toll on their lives and their ability to focus.
What are some strategies for unplugging from the demand of digital devices? Is there such a thing as too much multitasking?
- Nicholas Carr, author of “The Shallows” and “The Big Switch”
- Gary W. Small, psychiatry professor, U.C.L.A.
- William Powers, author, “Hamlet’s BlackBerry”
- Liza Daly, software engineer
- Steven Yantis, professor of psychological and brain sciences
- Russell A. Poldrack, professor of neurobiology
- Timothy B. Lee, Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy
- Clifford Nass, professor of cognitive science
- Gloria Mark, professor of informatics
It Starts With the Individual
Nicholas Carr is the author of “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains” and “The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, From Edison to Google.”Life would be intolerable if we weren’t able to multitask. Imagine not being able to cook a meal while listening to the radio or chatting with your spouse. Or imagine being forced to do only one thing at a time all day at work. The tedium would be unendurable.
Your career may suffer if you aren’t available all the time. You may feel socially isolated if you disconnect. But you’ll protect your brain.
The problem today is that, thanks to our more or less continuous connections to the Internet and other electronic media, we never stop multitasking. And we juggle more tasks and bits of information than ever before. That’s taking a big toll. Constant multitasking is associated with shallower thinking, weakened concentration, reduced creativity, and heightened stress.
The only way to stop is to stop – to turn off the BlackBerry and the iPhone, to check e-mail two or three times a day rather than every three minutes, to spend a few hours reading a novel or immersed in a hobby or having a real conversation. If you regularly give your brain an opportunity to relax, by concentrating on one thing instead of a dozen, the cognitive and emotional costs of multitasking will decline.
Cutting back sounds easy, but of course it’s not. It’s really hard. If your boss and your colleagues expect you to be connected all the time, your career may suffer if you go silent. And if your friends are texting, tweeting, and Facebooking around the clock, going offline can leave you feeling socially isolated.
Then again, the only way to change social norms is for individuals to change their behavior. If you lead, maybe others will follow. At the very least, you’ll probably feel calmer, sharper and more in control of your thoughts.
Cutting back sounds easy, but of course it’s not. It’s really hard. If your boss and your colleagues expect you to be connected all the time, your career may suffer if you go silent. And if your friends are texting, tweeting, and Facebooking around the clock, going offline can leave you feeling socially isolated.
Then again, the only way to change social norms is for individuals to change their behavior. If you lead, maybe others will follow. At the very least, you’ll probably feel calmer, sharper and more in control of your thoughts.
Focus on One Thing
Gary W. Small is a professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences and director of the Memory and Aging Research Center at the David Geffen School of Medicine at University of California, Los Angeles. He is is co-author of the forthcoming book, “The Naked Lady Who Stood on Her Head: A Psychiatrist’s Stories of His Most Bizarre Cases.” There is such a thing as too much multitasking, but how much is too much will vary. With practice, the brain becomes more efficient at multitasking, but in general, multitaskers make more errors than people who focus on one task at a time.
Every hour or so turn off all your gadgets.
Many of us escalate from multitasking to partial continuous attention: we’re constantly scanning the environment for the next exciting bit of information — the next text message, IM, email, or even land-line phone call. That next ping or buzz or ring interrupts our focus and charges up the dopamine reward system as we anticipate something new and more exciting than the task at hand.
When paying partial continuous attention, people may place their brains in a heightened state of stress. They no longer have time to reflect, contemplate or make thoughtful decisions. Instead, they exist in a state of constant tension — on alert for a new contact or item of news or information at any moment. And, once people get used to it, they tend to thrive on the perpetual connectivity. It becomes irresistible.
Here are two strategies for taking control of your multitasking. First, remind yourself to focus on one task at a time. This often requires turning off several devices.
Second, make an effort to balance your tech time with regular off-line breaks. Every hour or so turn off all your gadgets and go low-tech, whether it’s writing a letter, having a brief conversation at the water cooler, or taking a stroll in the park or the parking lot. It will help minimize stress, maintain mental focus, and improve the quality of your life.
Here are two strategies for taking control of your multitasking. First, remind yourself to focus on one task at a time. This often requires turning off several devices.
Second, make an effort to balance your tech time with regular off-line breaks. Every hour or so turn off all your gadgets and go low-tech, whether it’s writing a letter, having a brief conversation at the water cooler, or taking a stroll in the park or the parking lot. It will help minimize stress, maintain mental focus, and improve the quality of your life.
You Have to Want to Unplug
William Powers is the author of “Hamlet’s BlackBerry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age”, to be published this month. The book grew out of an essay he wrote as a fellow at Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.The problem isn’t our iPhones and BlackBerrys, it’s how we’re using them. We’ve simply gone overboard, surrendered too much of our lives to our little screens.
Know why you’re withdrawing from your devices and make it a habit.
Socrates was so hooked on the dominant connectedness of his time — oral conversation — he couldn’t bear to spend time outside the walls of Athens. Why take a quiet walk in the country when he could be where the action was, chatting up his friends? A friend showed Socrates that putting some distance between yourself and your busy, connected life does wonders for the mind. Today we just need to learn that same lesson.
Unplugging from one’s devices — turning off the screen, leaving the phone in a drawer for a few hours — provides instant distance, but it only works under two conditions:
1) You have to know why you’re doing it, and really believe in the goals. That’s why news stories like this one are useful. They shine a light on the enormous losses we incur by never disconnecting — in our relationships, our work and most important, our inner lives. When your mind is always skating the surface, never going too deep, you’re simply not as alive as you could be. Once you recognize that your life will really improve, disconnecting becomes a lot easier.
2) It has to become a habit. In one of the studies cited in The Times article, university students reported that going offline for a day made them miserable. Of course it did. They were in withdrawal. You have to turn unplugging into a regular ritual, one that has its own positive rewards. You’re not just taking something away, as a restrictive diet does. You’re adding something wonderful.
My family has been disconnecting from the Internet every weekend for three years now. It was hard at first, but once we got into the habit, it became effortless, and all kinds of amazing benefits revealed themselves. We’ve never looked back.
1) You have to know why you’re doing it, and really believe in the goals. That’s why news stories like this one are useful. They shine a light on the enormous losses we incur by never disconnecting — in our relationships, our work and most important, our inner lives. When your mind is always skating the surface, never going too deep, you’re simply not as alive as you could be. Once you recognize that your life will really improve, disconnecting becomes a lot easier.
2) It has to become a habit. In one of the studies cited in The Times article, university students reported that going offline for a day made them miserable. Of course it did. They were in withdrawal. You have to turn unplugging into a regular ritual, one that has its own positive rewards. You’re not just taking something away, as a restrictive diet does. You’re adding something wonderful.
My family has been disconnecting from the Internet every weekend for three years now. It was hard at first, but once we got into the habit, it became effortless, and all kinds of amazing benefits revealed themselves. We’ve never looked back.
We’ll Learn Fast
Liza Daly is a software engineer who specializes in applications for the publishing industry. She is the president of Threepress Consulting Inc. and recently released e-book reading software called Ibis Reader.My husband and I are both software engineers, and my business in particular involves a lot of gadgets, including half a dozen specialized e-reading devices. The hardest part is finding the actual gadget I need (and then waiting for it to recharge — most of them sit idle for weeks on end).
Right now, we’re still playing with the new toys, but we’ll find a good equilibrium over time.
Of course, we all feel distracted at times, and part of adapting to social media and ubiquitous Internet is about learning to turn those distractions off. Right now, we’re all still playing with the new toys, but if humans are good at anything, we’re good at returning to an equilibrium over time.
People will overreach with new technology, a few destructively, but the majority will learn when the task-switching becomes stressful instead of exciting. I was part of one of the earliest generations to grow up with cable TV and home video games, but in no way did that diminish my enthusiasm for a slow foreign film, a long novel or a walk in the woods.
Wasting time YouTube-video-hopping is no worse than wasting time channel-surfing with the remote; if anything, it’s about direct person-to-person engagement. And lot of that obsessive Googling and social media is about finding exactly the right book, movie or TV show to finally settle down with.
Finally, it’s easy to identify the new stressors and forget the old hassles. Does anyone miss waiting at home for a phone call on a beautiful day?
Steven Yantis is a professor of psychological and brain sciences at Johns Hopkins University.
The first step in developing a strategy for dealing with information overload is to recognize that the human mind, while amazingly adaptable, is nevertheless limited in what it can do — and that those limitations have to be respected.
Most people have a strong intuition that they are good multitaskers — that they can easily handle doing several things at once. However, that intuition is often wrong.
In fact, the term “multitasking” is misleading. With rare exceptions, people don’t carry out two (or more) tasks literally at the same time; they switch between them, and each switch takes time — a “switch cost.” The switch costs are small but easily measurable in an experimental psychology lab.
Russell A. Poldrack is the director of the Imaging Research Center and professor of psychology and neurobiology at the University of Texas at Austin.
As a busy researcher who owns an iPhone, iPad, and several computers, I often find it very difficult to practice what I preach when it comes to the dangers of multitasking (though I absolutely never talk on the cellphone while driving).
I think that the first key to successfully unplugging is to gain some insight into the effects that multitasking and information overload have on our own minds. As nicely discussed in the book “The Invisible Gorilla” by Chris Chabris and Dan Simons, humans are often very poor at understanding how our own minds work, and multitasking is a perfect example: Everyone thinks that they are one of those 3 percent of “supertaskers,” even as the scientific data shows that multitasking takes a serious toll on our performance as well as on our emotional lives.
Our research has shown that multitasking can have an insidious effect on learning, changing the brain systems that are involved so that even if one can learn while multitasking, the nature of that learning is altered to be less flexible. This effect is of particular concern given the increasing use of devices by children during studying.
Timothy B. Lee is an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute and a member of the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University. He blogs at Bottom-Up.
When a new technology enters the social scene, hand-wringing about its social effects is never far behind. So I was not surprised to see Matt Richtel offer the latest contribution to this shopworn genre. The trends he describes are not nearly as novel — or as alarming — as he and the experts he interviews seem to think.
The article quotes Stanford’s Clifford Nass, who warns that excessive use of digital technologies will “diminish empathy by limiting how much people engage with one another.” That may be true for some people, but for most people the reality is just the opposite: the Internet broadens and strengthens our social ties and greatly enhances our ability to engage with one another.
The Internet may have strained Kord Campbell’s marriage, but I’ve found it to have the opposite effect on my own. My wife and I are rarely out of touch for more than a few hours. We use a steady stream of text messages, instant messages, and e-mails to stay constantly in touch. We’re able to share the day’s joys and setbacks in real-time even when we’re miles apart.
Clifford Nass is a professor of communications and cognitive science at Stanford University. He is the author of the forthcoming “The Man Who Lied To His Laptop: What Technologies Teach Us About Human Relationships.”
The most important way to deal with your own multitasking is to consider a distinction proposed by Professor Barbara Fried at Stanford: are you multitasking because new information attracts you or because what you are currently doing is boring you?
I suspect that younger people are multitasking because they believe that information they haven’t seen is better than the information that they are currently working with. This may explain why they tend to prefer reading summaries to actual books, why they are willing to jump from one Web page to another, and why they do homework while Facebooking, Twittering, I.M.ing, texting, watching television and talking on the phone.
On the other hand, I suspect that older multitaskers understand that most new information is not worthwhile, but it’s better than what they’re currently doing.
For many individuals, the use of applications like e-mail or Facebook follows a schedule where they receive rewards at random intervals. From psychological learning theory we know that random reinforcement schedules are the hardest to extinguish. It’s like playing the Las Vegas slot machines: one keeps checking e-mail for that next hit.
Though withdrawal is not easy, I advocate working in “batch mode” where information technology is used at certain time intervals. This could mean reading e-mail once in the morning, once after lunch, and then again once in the evening. With enough discipline, e-mail could even be reduced to a single reading each day.
Other people may be dependent on information technology from to the demands of their workplace. People have to react to e-mail or I.M. or phone calls to keep current with work, and mobile devices allow work to bleed into personal life.
Wasting time YouTube-video-hopping is no worse than wasting time channel-surfing with the remote; if anything, it’s about direct person-to-person engagement. And lot of that obsessive Googling and social media is about finding exactly the right book, movie or TV show to finally settle down with.
Finally, it’s easy to identify the new stressors and forget the old hassles. Does anyone miss waiting at home for a phone call on a beautiful day?
E-mail Can Wait
Steven Yantis is a professor of psychological and brain sciences at Johns Hopkins University.The first step in developing a strategy for dealing with information overload is to recognize that the human mind, while amazingly adaptable, is nevertheless limited in what it can do — and that those limitations have to be respected.
With ‘multitasking,’ deep thinking about a complex topic can become nearly impossible.
In fact, the term “multitasking” is misleading. With rare exceptions, people don’t carry out two (or more) tasks literally at the same time; they switch between them, and each switch takes time — a “switch cost.” The switch costs are small but easily measurable in an experimental psychology lab.
In addition to the switch cost, each time you switch away from a task and back again, you have to recall where you were in that task, what you were thinking about. If the tasks are complex, you may well forget some aspect of what you were thinking about before you switched away, which may require you to revisit some aspect of the task you had already solved (for example, you may have to re-read the last paragraph you’d been reading). Deep thinking about a complex topic can become nearly impossible.
The mind is wired up to seek new information, and will automatically respond to a signal that something new is available (email, text, phone, tweet). Some jobs by their very nature require constant contact. But if you can, give your brain the space to think deeply about something (even if that means reading a good book) by turning off your e-mail chime and cellphone ringer. Schedule some other dedicated time in the day to respond to e-mail and phone — usually, it can wait.
The mind is wired up to seek new information, and will automatically respond to a signal that something new is available (email, text, phone, tweet). Some jobs by their very nature require constant contact. But if you can, give your brain the space to think deeply about something (even if that means reading a good book) by turning off your e-mail chime and cellphone ringer. Schedule some other dedicated time in the day to respond to e-mail and phone — usually, it can wait.
Addictive Signals
Russell A. Poldrack is the director of the Imaging Research Center and professor of psychology and neurobiology at the University of Texas at Austin.As a busy researcher who owns an iPhone, iPad, and several computers, I often find it very difficult to practice what I preach when it comes to the dangers of multitasking (though I absolutely never talk on the cellphone while driving).
Our research shows that multitasking can have an insidious effect on learning, making it less flexible.
Our research has shown that multitasking can have an insidious effect on learning, changing the brain systems that are involved so that even if one can learn while multitasking, the nature of that learning is altered to be less flexible. This effect is of particular concern given the increasing use of devices by children during studying.
Our brains are wonderfully adaptive systems, and they adjust their expectations to the world around them. The constant stream of novel information provided by electronic devices creates an expectation of continued novelty, and when this is missing the brain issues signals that causes us to seek it out, just as a drug addict will seek out drugs.
Although the research in this area is still preliminary, we believe that the same brain systems are probably involved in the drive towards compulsive use of our electronic devices that are involved in other kinds of addiction.
I have also found that practices that improve our focus (such as yoga or meditation) can be particularly helpful in calming the mental storm of information overload. It appears that these kinds of training can help improve the same cognitive control processes that are lacking in the media multitaskers studied by the Stanford group, just as they also seem to have some efficacy in treating A.D.H.D.
I think it is also very important to take regular “technology vacations” where we leave the devices behind completely. I find that it takes several days for the urge to look at my iPhone to abate, and doing this can help remind us what life can be like without the constant urge to multitask.
Although the research in this area is still preliminary, we believe that the same brain systems are probably involved in the drive towards compulsive use of our electronic devices that are involved in other kinds of addiction.
I have also found that practices that improve our focus (such as yoga or meditation) can be particularly helpful in calming the mental storm of information overload. It appears that these kinds of training can help improve the same cognitive control processes that are lacking in the media multitaskers studied by the Stanford group, just as they also seem to have some efficacy in treating A.D.H.D.
I think it is also very important to take regular “technology vacations” where we leave the devices behind completely. I find that it takes several days for the urge to look at my iPhone to abate, and doing this can help remind us what life can be like without the constant urge to multitask.
The Social Internet
Timothy B. Lee is an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute and a member of the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University. He blogs at Bottom-Up.When a new technology enters the social scene, hand-wringing about its social effects is never far behind. So I was not surprised to see Matt Richtel offer the latest contribution to this shopworn genre. The trends he describes are not nearly as novel — or as alarming — as he and the experts he interviews seem to think.
We shouldn’t be too worried if we spend more time on Facebook looking at our friends’ baby pictures and less time working on that spreadsheet.
The Internet may have strained Kord Campbell’s marriage, but I’ve found it to have the opposite effect on my own. My wife and I are rarely out of touch for more than a few hours. We use a steady stream of text messages, instant messages, and e-mails to stay constantly in touch. We’re able to share the day’s joys and setbacks in real-time even when we’re miles apart.
The Internet has allowed me to nurture a number of long-distance friendships that would have withered in a pre-Internet era. I have about a dozen close friends who have moved far away from me. Tools like Twitter, Facebook, instant messaging, and email, have been essential to staying close.
The Internet also enables the creation of entirely new friendships. People with common interests — even quite obscure ones — can find one another and build virtual communities. If they happen to be in the same city, sites such as MeetUp help virtual friendships evolve into “real” ones.
In other cases, people derive enormous value from relationships conducted entirely on the Internet. Imagine, for example, about a gay teenager in a small, conservative town. In a pre-Internet world, he would have felt utterly alone. The Internet allows him to find others who will understand and support him.
To be sure, some people become so obsessed with technology that it damages their “real life” relationships. But this is hardly the fault of technology. Mrs. Campbell is understandably upset that her husband pays more attention to his gadgets than to his children. But Mrs. Campbell’s complaint would have been completely familiar to a wife in 1980 (or 1950) whose husband paid more attention to the Big Game than his family. Such behavior has been around a lot longer than the Internet.
This isn’t to deny that information overload can be a real problem. This spring, for example, I took a month-long break from most of my online activities to concentrate on meeting an important deadline. But we shouldn’t exaggerate the importance of productivity for productivity’s sake.
Many online “distractions” are more important than whatever we happen to be working on when they arrive. The time we spend interacting with friends and family online can have a large and positive impact on our quality of life. So we shouldn’t be too worried if we spend more time on Facebook looking at our friends’ baby pictures and less time working on that all-important spreadsheet.
The Internet also enables the creation of entirely new friendships. People with common interests — even quite obscure ones — can find one another and build virtual communities. If they happen to be in the same city, sites such as MeetUp help virtual friendships evolve into “real” ones.
In other cases, people derive enormous value from relationships conducted entirely on the Internet. Imagine, for example, about a gay teenager in a small, conservative town. In a pre-Internet world, he would have felt utterly alone. The Internet allows him to find others who will understand and support him.
To be sure, some people become so obsessed with technology that it damages their “real life” relationships. But this is hardly the fault of technology. Mrs. Campbell is understandably upset that her husband pays more attention to his gadgets than to his children. But Mrs. Campbell’s complaint would have been completely familiar to a wife in 1980 (or 1950) whose husband paid more attention to the Big Game than his family. Such behavior has been around a lot longer than the Internet.
This isn’t to deny that information overload can be a real problem. This spring, for example, I took a month-long break from most of my online activities to concentrate on meeting an important deadline. But we shouldn’t exaggerate the importance of productivity for productivity’s sake.
Many online “distractions” are more important than whatever we happen to be working on when they arrive. The time we spend interacting with friends and family online can have a large and positive impact on our quality of life. So we shouldn’t be too worried if we spend more time on Facebook looking at our friends’ baby pictures and less time working on that all-important spreadsheet.
Why Are You Multitasking?
Clifford Nass is a professor of communications and cognitive science at Stanford University. He is the author of the forthcoming “The Man Who Lied To His Laptop: What Technologies Teach Us About Human Relationships.”The most important way to deal with your own multitasking is to consider a distinction proposed by Professor Barbara Fried at Stanford: are you multitasking because new information attracts you or because what you are currently doing is boring you?
Old and young may have different reasons for addictively checking e-mail.
On the other hand, I suspect that older multitaskers understand that most new information is not worthwhile, but it’s better than what they’re currently doing.
If you check your e-mail thinking that you might find something exciting — which seems to be true for the students in my college dormitory and most of the young people I meet (I’m a “dorm dad” at Stanford) — then it may be very hard to stop multitasking.
However, if you are multitasking to avoid doing what you’re doing (which is true for me and most of the writers I know), then there are real opportunities. Rather than doing something else with media, force yourself to do what we did when multiple media were not available: take a walk, do some stretches, or tough it out and get back to work. Not only will this be healthier for your brain, your body will benefit as well!
However, if you are multitasking to avoid doing what you’re doing (which is true for me and most of the writers I know), then there are real opportunities. Rather than doing something else with media, force yourself to do what we did when multiple media were not available: take a walk, do some stretches, or tough it out and get back to work. Not only will this be healthier for your brain, your body will benefit as well!
Change the Workplace Norm
Gloria Mark is a professor in the Department of Informatics, University of California, Irvine. She studies human-computer interaction.
For many individuals, the use of applications like e-mail or Facebook follows a schedule where they receive rewards at random intervals. From psychological learning theory we know that random reinforcement schedules are the hardest to extinguish. It’s like playing the Las Vegas slot machines: one keeps checking e-mail for that next hit. Some companies have experimented with interruption-free times or by allowing e-mail to be turned off.
Other people may be dependent on information technology from to the demands of their workplace. People have to react to e-mail or I.M. or phone calls to keep current with work, and mobile devices allow work to bleed into personal life.
It’s much harder to untether ourselves from information technology when it is connected to our jobs. The workplace is a multitasking social system; one person’s information need is an interruption to their colleague.
To reduce dependency on information technology in the workplace, the norms of the whole work group need to change so that no individual would be penalized for not responding to messages immediately. Some companies have experimented with interruption-free times or by allowing e-mail to be turned off.
Multitasking will not go away. The technologies that are designed to save us time can at the same time increase stress, but the solutions may also come from new technology.
To reduce dependency on information technology in the workplace, the norms of the whole work group need to change so that no individual would be penalized for not responding to messages immediately. Some companies have experimented with interruption-free times or by allowing e-mail to be turned off.
Multitasking will not go away. The technologies that are designed to save us time can at the same time increase stress, but the solutions may also come from new technology.
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