Media multitasking is increasingly the way most people work, but perhaps it shouldn’t be. “Cognitive Control in Media Multitaskers” (written by three Stanford University professors: Eyal Ophir, Clifford Nass, and Anthony D. Wagner) suggests media multitasking may not be the effective work style its adherents presume.
As a part of their research they “developed a questionnaire-based media multitasking index to determine the mean number of media a person simultaneously consumes when consuming media.” Those who are of greatest interest are those characterized as heavy media multitaskers (HMMs) or those who scored “one standard deviation or more above the mean.” The research suggests:
HMMs have greater difficulty filtering out irrelevant stimuli from their environment . . . they are less likely to ignore irrelevant representations in memory . . . and they are less effective in suppressing the activation of irrelevant task sets (task-switching). This last result is particularly striking given the central role attributed to task switching in multitasking.
So What?
The problem is not likely to go away and may become more frequent given recent technological trends. More specifically, the authors indicate that:
With the diffusion of larger computing screens supporting multiple windows and browsers, chat, and SMS, and portable media coupled with social and work expectations of immediate responsiveness, media multitasking is quickly becoming ubiquitous. These changes are placing new demands on cognitive processing, and especially on attention allocation.
This research should be of great concern to anyone who uses multiple media in their work or who supervises staff with those responsibilities.
- Do you think you may fit the HMM profile?
- If not, do you find that you experience some of the same issues — especially when you increase the number of media from your normal level?
- If so, are you willing to revisit or limit in some way the amount of your work day spent in HMM behavior?
- How do you balance the expectations of staying connected to multiple media with the demands of productivity?
While pondering the implications of this research in my own work, I immediately thought about RockMelt – a new social browser. I became a user earlier this month and even blogged about my initial experiences. Currently, RockMelt is my default browser and my gateway to being categorized as a HMM. When I need to engage my mind deeply or focus on a primary task, I find it helpful to turn off the edge that connects me to other people and ignore the edge that connects me to the latest data.