E-multitasking is a strain on the brain

In the multi-media age, keeping open several internet windows at once, switching between multiple emails and pinging text messages, all while consuming TV or digital, has become the norm, particularly for remote or freelance workers.



These 'high-tech jugglers' often reassure themselves that while their PC, phone or households bills might suffer, the gains for their personal productivity should compensate.



But new research from the respected Stanford University has found that such "media multitaskers" are missing a much bigger consideration: their brain power and mental health.



After using three tests on 100 volunteers, some of whom regularly bombarded themselves with several streams of electronic information, the tech jugglers were found to be worse at paying attention and had holes in their short-term memory.



"They're suckers for irrelevancy," said Clifford Nass, a communication Professor at Stanford University, and one of the research co-authors. "Everything distracts them."



In one of the experiments, people unfamiliar with media-multitasking emerged as markedly better than the jugglers at not being distracted by a crop of irrelevant images over images they were asked to select.



To determine if the jugglers simply could not ignore repetitive images because they possessed better memories, another test involved selecting a letter that appeared twice.



Again, however, the multitaskers performed poorly, and so the researchers thought it may be that they excel at switching from one thing to another faster than the single-taskers.



For this third test, the subjects were shown images of letters and numbers at the same time and instructed what to focus on. They had to determine if the digits were even or odd and when the letters were vowels or consonants.



But the multitaskers "couldn't help thinking about the task they weren't doing," said research co-author Eyal Ophir.



"The high multitaskers are always drawing from all the information in front of them. They can't keep things separate in their minds."



The researchers are now studying whether media multitaskers are born with an inability to concentrate or are damaging their cognitive control by willingly taking in so much at once.



For now, though, the researchers said the tests have convinced them that the minds of multitaskers are "not working as well as they could."



"When they're in situations where there are multiple sources of information coming from the external world or emerging out of memory, they're not able to filter out what's not relevant to their current goal," said Anthony Wagner, an associate professor of psychology at Stanford University.



"That failure to filter means they're slowed down by that irrelevant information."



To avoid the mental blockage, the researchers recommended e-mailing when the match is at half-time, or text messaging once your duet with the radio is finished, because "by doing less, you might accomplish more."