An article in today’s New York Times (4.17.2010) gives further support for the conclusion that we can’t multitask.  In an article titled “As Cell Service Expands in Subways, Thefts Rise.” It says:

“…most thefts occur when passengers are sitting or standing in the subway near the door and paying more attention to their phones than to their surroundings.  The thief snatches the phone and darts out of the train just as the doors shut.”

Imagine: Concentrating so much on your conversation or texting that you don’t notice the potential robber, and your reflexes are so slow you can’t hold on to the very gadget you’re using! Simply put, your brain cannot focus attention on more than one thing at a time.

This is what I explain in Conquer CyberOverload: Get More Done, Boost Your Creativity, and Reduce Stress.  Understanding how your brain works can help you get the most out of technology without being overwhelmed by it.

There is more and more fascinating research about the benefits of sleep. We always knew that a good night’s sleep helps us feel restored and lets us wake up refreshed.  But  a recent article in the Wall Street Journal (6/9/2009, p. D1), reports on some of the findings presented at the American Association of Sleep Medicine’s annual meeting in Seattle.  These reports reiterate the fact that sleep performs other important functions, and that the “quality” of sleep is just as important as the quantity. Poor quality sleep does not have sufficient phases of REM (Rapid-Eye-Movement) sleep, which are “crucial for consolidating memories, learning, creativity, problem solving, and emotional balance.” Not surprisingly, Inadequate sleep is also related to lower grades and among college students.  In the recommendations section of the article, many of the usual culprits to avoid (like caffeine, alcohol, and stress) are listed.  In addition, another practical tip is that using the Internet, cellphones, and text messages close to bedtime “can delay sleep and increase awakenings.”  

Another reason to cut back a bit on our chronic cyber-connectedness.

On a recent blog on The Huffington Post, Megan Scott talks about how teens are “panicking” at the thought of going to a summer camp where they will have to give up their cell phones and access to the Internet  for a few weeks.  This doesn’t surprise me because electronic connections have become so much a part of teens’ lives. It’s a difficult situation because apparently many teens are balking at going somewhere where their media access is restricted; although on the other hand, you can easily see the camp’s viewpoint, wanting these kids to interact with their peers who are physically present and to enjoy nature and the change it represents from kids’ normal lives.  

A vacation from constant connectedness, however short, would undoubtedly be good for all of us, just in terms of re-connecting with our own thoughts and appreciating a bit of serenity for a change. Mark Bittmanof the New York Times  wrote an interesting article in March of last year, calling himself a techno-addict, and detailing how he had started taking a “secular sabbath” one day a week away from technology — no TV, no cellphone, no email, no Internet.  He said it was difficult at first, but that after a few months he had noticed a really positive change.  He ended with the following quote:

“Once I moved beyond the fear of being unavailable and what it might cost me, I experienced what, if I wasn’t such a skeptic, I would call a lightness of being. I felt connected to myself rather than my computer. I had time to think, and distance from normal demands. I got to stop.”

Sounds like something we could all benefit from!

On April 18th, I made a brief presentation to the Madison Civics Club about the impact of technology on adults, with some tips on reducing stress and enhancing creativity in our media-dominated world.  This was done in conjunction with a presentation by Anastassia Goodstein, expert on the media-saturated lives of tweens and teens.  Many members of the audience agreed with me that this is as important an issue for adults as it is for young people.  Follow this link to  my presentation.

An new study in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence, (reported on PsychCentral.com) reports that in a sample of more than 800 college students from around the country, the more time students spent playing video games, the poorer the quality of their relationships with their parents and peers.  This finding occurred to the surprise and disappointment of one of the authors, a graduate student. Of course, it’s unclear from a study like this whether video game play harms relationships by taking time away from interpersonal contact or whether students with poor relationships turn to video games to fill their empty time. The researchers suggest that it may be a curvilinear relationship.

But leaving aside the video game debate (and especially the violent video game debate that I’ve discussed before), I’ve been wondering about how much our constant connection to electronic gadgets in general interferes with that old-fashioned face-to-face communication that our brains were designed for. Of course, the more time we spend on solitary pursuits, the less time we have for each other.  But even when we’re in electronic contact with our friends and families — when we email, IM, twitter, and even call each other on our cellphones, we miss face-to-face communication. We can’t see how the other person is responding to what we say — are they understanding us? are they bored? are we on the same page? And they can’t see our arched eyebrow to know we’re just kidding, or our quivering lip to know we’re nervous or distressed.  

And we can’t share smiles! Brain research shows that when we smile and when we see someone genuinely smile at us, certain reward centers in the brain become active, and this makes us feel great. We lose this when we communicate mainly via our gadgets. Of course, our gadgets let us stay in contact with many more people, and with people who are far away, whom we may get to see only on rare occasions.  But if electronic communication becomes the main way we connect, we lose something very important.

The next time you have to stand in a long checkout line, rather than whipping out your cell phone and making a call to someone you know, try engaging the person behind you in a pleasant conversation (even if it’s about the weather or the length of the line!), and then give a big smile to the checker — no matter how sullen or bored she looks — and see if you can get her to smile back.  You’ll be surprised how wonderful this feels.

All the media at our disposal — laptops, blackberries, TVs, cellphones, ipods, old-fashioned car radios — mean we’re multitasking more and more, to the extent that “single-tasking” seems to be a rarity.  We don’t even need two gadgets to multitask anymore. We can email, IM, twitter, and surf the internet on one device, and when we watch TV news, sports, or financial shows, we watch the crawl and the changing stats while listening to the talking heads or watching an event happening.  This is “efficient” in some ways — doing more than one thing in the same time frame.  But it comes with a cost.  We definitely get less information because we can’t focus our attention on two things at once. Neuroscience has confirmed that. So what we do is get bits and pieces of the multiple things we’re trying to keep up with. We either miss a lot, or we can go back and replay what we’ve missed (not very efficient after all).  It’s true that many people feel uncomfortable with single-tasking these days: the speed of regular conversations has become too slow-moving for them. Pauses are not to be used to contemplate what has just been seen or heard or to relate it to what we already know.  Pauses are to be filled with something else!  

Switching back and forth between paying attention to two different things is difficult for our brains; we definitely lose something with each transition. When we multitask our entertainment, we also lose much of the enjoyment: Good movies are painstakingly created to give us visual images and sounds meant to be focussed on continuously; and they create a rhythm and pace designed to capture and affect our emotions. When we switch back and forth, we get less than we deserve. Maybe movie theaters will retain their allure for this reason. As I blogged a couple of days ago, football stadiums are trying to become more like living rooms, allowing people to tune into replays, ongoing stats, and other outside sources of information while in the stadium.  Apparently this is what fans want.

There are times when focusing on only one thing really enhances the experience and other times when this may not be as essential. But to get the most out of what you’re doing, it’s a good idea to be aware of which times are which.

This morning’s front page of the New York times has a story about how fans at football games are feeling bereft compared to viewers at home who have the benefit of the multiple-angle replays, commentary, and statistics that home-viewers now take for granted.  New stadiums are finding ways to provide these technological enhancements to stadium customers.  So, virtual reality marches on to encroach more and more into so-called “real-life.”  Is this a good thing? Will the camaraderie of viewing with thousands of others be lost as each fan seeks individualized information? I don’t know — but we seem to me moving more and more toward relationships with our gadgets and less and less toward relationships with people.