"Joe Smith is checking out the new bar in town!!! :)"
This is just one of the many status updates that you can find on Facebook or Twitter. The advancement of digital technology has provided us an incredible amount of information. But the easy accessibility has also made us susceptible to more distractions, decreasing our ability to focus.
Personally speaking, I find it hard to sit still for 3-4 hours concentrating on one issue without logging into my e-mail or checking my text messages. I used to have Facebook, but deleted it because eventually its distraction exceeded a tolerable level. Every ten to fifteen minutes, I would feel a pang of desire to check e-mails or Facebook creeping up my spine like an invisible hand. Why do I constantly desire to update my e-mail page? Maybe I am always waiting for some kind of news that will break the banality of modern life.
Any serious academic endeavor requires dedicating undivided attention to the subject at hand. For a math major like me, mathematical proofs and computations leave absolutely no room for error. My inability to concentrate is a major impediment to exploring more sophisticated mathematical inquiries.
I am currently writing my senior thesis for my economics major. Sadly, my advancement on the project has been less than ideal. Without a doubt, I largely attribute my lack of progress to my increasing inability to focus. To write a quantitatively demanding economics paper, I would have to bury myself in the library for hours, researching and contemplating complex economic issues. But I have not been able to do that precisely because I am constantly distracted by e-mails, text messages, or random YouTube clips that my fraternity brothers send out.
But I am no exception. Next time you are in class, pay attention to the folks around you who have their computers on. Mark my words: many will be on Facebook, e-mail, Twitter, or YouTube. In one of my seminars this semester, a girl who sits in front of me would hit the "refresh" button on her e-mail page with the same frequency and intensity of a fighter jet pilot checking his radar screen for enemy planes.
Decreasing literacy is one dire consequence that our abusive use of digital technology has caused. Because we are so entrenched in TV shows, cell phones and computers, we no longer have the time nor interest in reading print books and magazines. In 2007, the National Endowment for the Arts published To Read or Not to Read, which comprehensively evaluated the literacy of American youth. Two of the disconcerting conclusions from the report are: "Americans are spending less time reading," and as a result, "reading comprehension skills are eroding."
Some might argue that the internet has replaced the role that physical books and periodicals serve. However, it is much harder to read long and in-depth passages on the internet than it is with actual books. The reasons are numerous. The radiation from computer screens strains your eyes. The sale ads of J.Press on the sidebar incite our consumerist impulse. The short headlines that are more prevalent on the Internet encourage us to scan through news rather than delving into it. Thus, we have become accustomed to absorbing information at a superficial level, rather than diving deep to contemplate on the most critical issues. We are dumbed down because of all the distractions from technology.
What if we are just good at multitasking? Information passes through us faster and in a larger quantity. Many of my peers boast of their superhuman capacity to perform various activities at the same time. Even employers are encouraging this trend. More and more job descriptions list multitasking as one of the skill sets required for employment. It seems that some of us believe that we have somehow evolved intellectually as a species to a point that makes us more adept at doing different things simultaneously than the older generations.
Or not, suggests Prof. Clifford Nass and his colleagues at Stanford University.
These scholars in Palo Alto conducted studies in 2009 and reached opposite conclusions. In two separate experiments, people who chronically multitasked underperformed compared to students who did one task at a time. For example, test participants were presented with numbers and letters simultaneously, and were asked to focus on one of them beforehand. They then had to determine if the number was odd or even when asked to focus on numbers. Conversely, they had to determine if the letter was a vowel or a consonant when asked to focus on the letters. The self-identified multitaskers fared worse than the people who do not routinely multitask.
Nass states that the multitaskers simply cannot help but be distracted by the irrelevant information. If we expose ourselves to too many things at one time, we become inundated with superfluous information that does not help us.
So from now on, my status update will be: Paul Chen is getting back to the old school way of absorbing information and knowledge.
Paul Chen's column appears Thursdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at p.chen@cavalierdaily.com.\n
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