Clifford Nass was a professor at Stanford University that studied the effects of multitasking on college students. He died Saturday at Stanford Sierra Camp near South Lake Tahoe according to his
Obituary, which outlines his studies. At Stanford, he was amazed by students who browsed Facebook and Twitter, texted on their cellphones, and did homework, all at once. At first, he envied the "skill," asking why he couldn't do it himself. Unfortunately, his studies showed that the multitaskers were actually terrible at organizing information, switching between tasks, and discerning significance. Writing samples from multitaskers showed less complex ideas, and he described them as "living and writing in a staccato world."
Pictured: Clifford Nass with various distracting objects
Writing this blog post, I have a video chat going on in the background, and occasional texts and Facebook notifications. My friends are commonly in similar situations. I think that his research holds true for many students, and we should learn from it.
Are you a multitasker? What are you doing at this very moment? Would you be more efficient if you did one thing at a time?
I feel that our generation may be more adapted to multitasking rather than other generations because we were still growing up with technology and we grew up along side multitasking. I think people of the past struggle with this multitasking because of the technological barrier that they face because they arent very tech savvy. I dont have any research/science to back up this claim but its just a theory i came up with.
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