Is Media Multitasking a Myth?

Media multitasking—simultaneously consuming multiple streamsof media, such as an eLearning course, email, text messages, and Facebookposts—is common. Or, at least, many people think that they are mediamultitaskers. Are they? If so, at what cost?

Multiple studies have found that, when people think they aremultitasking, they are actually rapidly switching their focus between two (ormore) activities or information streams, and their performance suffers as aresult. One example is a pair of studies of college students. Those wholistened to a lecture while also browsing or engaging in social activities ontheir laptops scored lower on “traditional measures of memory for lecturecontent” than students who were not allowed to use their laptops.

In fact, dozens of articles and books, some published nearly50 years ago, reach the same conclusion.

“Each time we move from hearing music to writing a text ortalking to someone, there is a stop/start process that goes on in the brain,”according to Nancy K. Napier, blogging for Psychology Today. “Thatstart/stop/start process is rough on us: Rather than saving time, it costs time(even very small microseconds), it’s less efficient, we make more mistakes, andover time it can be energy sapping.” 

So why does the myth persist? People routinely watch twoscreens and switch among apps on a smartphone while working, watching TV,reading news online, or engaging in eLearning—or another activity that demandsfocus; the idea of media multitasking has become ubiquitous in Westerncultures.

Researcher Eyal Ophir began studying media multitasking whenhe read repeatedly that young people, in surveys, reported more hours of mediaconsumption daily than was physically possible. The conclusion: They wereconsuming multiple streams of media simultaneously.

Ophir’s research classified people as “chronic heavy mediamultitaskers” or “light media multitaskers” based on how often they engaged inmedia multitasking. He tested the heaviest and lightest multitaskers on avariety of cognitive control abilities.

He did not find that some people actually could payattention to and absorb multiple media streams at once; rather, he found thatthose who thought they could “media multitask” were much worse at filteringinformation than individuals who acknowledged switching among tasks. In otherwords, heavy media multitaskers were less successful at ignoring irrelevantinformation—also known as distractions. Even when objects were clearlyidentified as irrelevant, the heavy media multitaskers had more troubleignoring them; this worsened as the volume of irrelevant information grew.

Another area where heavy media multitaskers’ performancesuffered was in switching focus. It took them longer than light multitaskers toswitch between tasks, which, Ophir said, is also a problem with information filtering.

The results “suggest that LMMs [low media multitaskers] havea greater tendency for top-down attentional control, and thus they may find iteasier to attentionally focus on a single task in the face of distractions. Bycontrast, HMMs [high media multitaskers] are more likely to respond to stimulioutside the realm of their immediate task, and thus may have a greater tendencyfor bottom-up attentional control and a bias toward exploratory, rather thanexploitative, information processing.”

Ophir attributes these results to heavy media multitaskers’having different priorities or goals than light multitaskers: “Where you mightsay traditionally we value the ability to focus through distractions, they arewilling to sacrifice focus in order to make sure they don’t miss an unexpected,but rewarding, surprise.”

In an interview with Avi Solomon, Ophir is careful to emphasizethat the findings do not point to a cause. “We can’t say if media multitaskingcauses these cognitive tendencies, or if people with these cognitive tendenciesgravitate to media multitasking.”

Multitasking—or trying to—can lead to cognitive overload,particularly if the different tasks or media streams are processed similarly inthe brain. “We use different cognitive resources for processing differentstimuli. For example, studies have demonstrated that it’s much easier toremember words while performing a spatial task than while performing alinguistic task. I’d expect that listening to music while trying to perform amusical task would be quite difficult.”

Since much of the media people consume simultaneouslydemands similar processing, high-media multitaskers might be more prone tocognitive overload. A more efficient approach is to block out distractionswhile working on a single task, moving on to the next after a set amount oftime or after completing the first task. Attending to email or social media isa task that should get its own block of time, perhaps.

That runs counter to how many people work; Ophir said it “demandsconscious effort” when he does it. But, he suggested, it is something thatcould be managed through media interfaces designed with the idea of a “quietmode” in mind.

References

Hembrooke, Helene, and Geri Gay. “The Laptop and the Lecture: The Effects of Multitasking in Learning Environments.” Journalof Computing in Higher Education,Vol. 15, No. 1. 2003.

Napier, Nancy K. “The Myth of Multitasking.” Psychology Today, Creativity Without Borders blog. 12 May 2014.

Ophir, Eyal, Clifford Nass, and Anthony D. Wagner. “Cognitive control in media multitaskers.” Proceedings ofthe National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 106, No. 37. September 2009.