Positive And Negative Correlations Between Multitasking Among College Students

Also at Peoria high school since they got rid of the televisions that told the time from every class room the students often turn to their phones to tell them the time. This doesn’t seem like a problem but if they go to check the time and see they have a notification they’ll often check it and then from there you know how the internet goes just moments later they’ll be scrolling through social media. You can see how easy this can become a problem and how phone use in the class room will increase the distraction rate with the availability of music, social media, and games on every Smartphone it’s very easy

Which includes less time on my phone texting, or any social media sites. This relates back to Margaret Soltan’s essay “Better Living Through Consciousness: Why You Should Take Your College Education Seriously”, she discusses how technology should be limited to reduce distraction of students. She wrote “Students are gazing at all manner of stuff on their laptops (and in doing so distracting those students trying to pay attention to the front of the room); professors are staring down at their PowerPoint slides and reading the words on them aloud. In some classrooms, professors report that groups of students are gathering in various corners to watch films together on someone’s screen while the professor attempts to lecture”. Many students use technology whether it’s a laptop, cell phone or IPad almost every class period you will find at least one student on a device.

Multitasking: A Poor Study Habit by Noelle Alberto shows that multitasking is a bad thing do when studying. Ablerto gives four main points in her article, those points being, that multitasking while studying doesn’t save time, multitasking doesn’t prepare you for the business world, damages the students ability to learn, and causes students not to gain the trait that helps for paying attention. Throughout her article she provides evidence to prove these four points to a decent extent. I would disagree with the point that multitasking isn’t saving time because of having to switch back and forth between tasks. I don’t believe this point because personally I know I save time from multitasking while studying.

In this modern era, it has become commonplace to try and accomplish as many tasks as possible as quickly as possible in order to be more efficient. With the help of technology, many believe that multitasking is becoming a required and helpful skill. Multitasking is actually a detrimental habit. Multitasking divides a person's concentration in order to attempt to complete multiple actions. Even though in the end the tasks are all finished, the quality of the finished task and the time required to finish all the tasks makes multitasking very inefficient. In addition, this division of concentration is causing many people to not pay attention. For most, multitasking is a disadvantageous skill that should not be encouraged as a valid

A ding from your computer alerts you to a Facebook post and you check that before you've finished texting. Does multitasking really work? “Every professor who looks out onto a sea of students these days knows there's email, FaceBook, Googling me, Googling them, Googling their next-door neighbor, that's happening in the classroom.”(Dretzin, Digital Nation) While technology can benefit students who use it right, several students believe they are capable of note-taking, taking in the information, and surfing the web all at once. The problem is that we are only good at doing one thing at a time, but by switching back and forth between sites even, it takes time for the brain to switch from one task to another. In the documentary it mentions a professor who gave a midterm of obvious questions if they had been listening in lectures, taking notes. While the students should have received 100%, the mean score was 75%. Even more reason to believe that technology used in lectures or using it to multitask is actually a distraction and can affect students grades

An associate professor of psychology at the university of California at Los Angeles said that focusing on one thing at a time may give a better understanding of a topic than multitasking. This shows that concentrating on one subject can be more beneficial than trying to multitask.The investigators from the lab of Larry Rosen, a psychology professor at California State University-Domingues Hills, marked down what students were doing while studying this includes reading a book, writing a paper, typing on the computer-also using email, listening to music, and surfing the web. This shows that students attempt other activities while studying/doing homework, in fact do more of the other stuff than their work.

While students feel they are great at multitasking, studies show that they actually perform academically at a lower level than those who do not multitask. A study was conducted by a respected research lab in Stanford University. Clifford Nass, a professor of communications at Stanford University, introduces us to a study conducted on carefully-selected high chronic students who multitask (Digital Nation). The experiment was structured for students to identify numbers as odd or even, letters as vowels or consonants. Professor Nass wanted to test how quickly these students can switch tasks without losing focus. The results showed that people who multitask are slower than those who do not multitask. While slower does not mean horrible, it should raise a sign that if they had focused on their work only they would get better scores in their respective studies. Sherry Turkle, in an interview, displayed the differences between two common multitasking activities: taking a break from your studies to stretch and surfing the web. Turkle says: “When you get up and stretch and take a walk around the block, you can stay with your problem. You can clear your mind; you can move your body. You can stay

Sarah D. Sparks wrote an interesting article in “Education Week,” that shows that multitasking is not an activity that reflects great results for most people. Sparks learned from Larry D. Rosen’s study that 13 to 18 year olds use an average of four to six types of technology simultaneously while they are not in school. Did you know when people multitask they never actually fully focus on anything? For people to do multiple things at once, it actually takes them longer to complete each task than if they did them one at a time. If someone has to make a decision, there will be a delay in their thinking process. In Sarah D. Sparks’ article, she refers to Steven G. Yantis’s research that explained that people who multitask actually perform lower on memory and attention tests than people who did not. This is due to them focusing more on their distractions. The effect of

In Alina Tugend’s article “Multitasking Can Make You Lose…Um…Focus,” the author discusses the dangers of attempting to multitask. Life in the twenty-first century tends to be fast paced which is one of the reasons why there is so much multitasking. Because we want everything fast, we try to get as many things accomplished in the shortest amount of time. According to “The Cost of Interrupted Work: More Speed and Stress,” a study that from April of 2007, while multitasking one is not able to produce as much. University of California professor Gloria Marks noticed that multitasking resulted in higher stress levels, workload, frustration, and pressure; such factors may bring about results that are less than acceptable.

What is multitasking and how does it affect our everyday lives? Multitasking is defined as rapidity switching from one task to another or completing several tasks concurrently instead of focusing primarily on one task and one task only. Even though, multitasking can make a task more enjoyable it can also make our performance less efficient. I have come to find that though my personal experiences that multitasking is a normal act we perform in our everyday lives, and focusing on a single task is almost impossible. A few prime examples of everyday multitasking are listening to the radio while completing homework assignments or answering the telephone at work while typing daily logs. It is far more likely for an individual to be performed more than one task at a given time, even if multitasking is having a negative effect on our cognitive thinking and causing undesirable stress.

The first scenario of when multitasking can be done is when you are doing homework.

Many students tend to have their cellphones out while were in class. For example, when entering a classroom, students tend to put their phones next to their computers or materials for easy access. Little do they know; their phones are the biggest distraction that they have. It takes away time from their learning and getting their work done. Multitasking can impact many college students even though they believe it is a quicker way to get things done.

4). It is very difficult to do “two complex tasks” at once (Paul 5). For instance, doing email and listening to the phone. These tasks diverts the mind due to which people do not focus properly on them and results in lower efficiency. Multitaskers omit much information and it takes time to refocus on both of them. Therefore, “Efficiency can drop by as much as 40%” (Atchly par. 2). Peter Bregman mentions that in the reality, “the more you multitask, the worse you are at it” (519). It means that multitasking decrease the ability to think and focus after switch task. Multitasking not only affects the quality of the work…, … it can affect the brain’s gray matter , which is associated with memory, decision making and more” (Vito par. 8). Hence, multiple tasks results in the poor productivity.

Unfortunately, cell phones have become one of the biggest challenges instructors face in college classrooms as these devices have become a pervasive part of young people's lives. What used to only make phone calls and send text messages, now does our emailing, sends us Facebook and Snapchat notifications, and plays music. Additionally, our cell phones are not only used for personal activities, but for school and work life. We want to be reachable in case of an emergency, but the constant stream of notifications has led our productivity to significantly tumble down. Recently, I noticed that in many of my classes, even though the professor says there is a “no phone” policy, many students are scrolling through their social media feeds or responding to a text rather than paying attention to the lecture of the day. I admit to using my phone constantly during class, which often has led my grades to suffer poorly. Rather than paying attention to the lesson, I was checking on buzzing notifications of entertainment news and random trivia. Because I was not listening to my professor earlier in the day, I had a difficult time trying to complete the homework assignment. Thus, in an attempt to be epistemic temperate, for the last two days, I tried to not use my phone during class lectures and study time to measure my productivity.

The article focuses on the distraction of mobile devices in the college classroom. Brenner explains that they are distracting to not only the person using them, but the people around them as well. Through her research, she found that the people sitting next to multitaskers on their laptops tended to score lower on tests than those without the distraction. On that note, she states that people “are not wired to multi task”. Through a study, she found that texting during lectures caused a decrease in student’s ability to take notes, pay attention, and perform well on tests. She also found that the use of laptops