Many studies have shown that multitasking is ineffective and that the brain can’t split its focus to juggle multiple tasks, why is this? Do you ever think that multitasking can be mastered? Why or why not? Be specific.
Multitasking. Oh how I hate that word. Even though I have been a culprit of this many times, I find multitasking completely ineffective. I understand how people may multitask on the computer, I have five tabs open right now. However, I have no idea how students can multi-task while studying or doing homework. There is no way that a student can be fully focused on their biology homework while Jay-Z is blasting in their room. The biggest problem with multitasking is the distraction aspect. I get distracted very easily; I cannot study with any noise in the background. The mind cannot absorb information as well when it’s trying to focus on ten things at once. Humans can simply focus on one thing at once, multitasking is just a delusion of the mind. I find that when I do multitask, I take longer to finish my work as a whole. Even if I am switching back and forth between Math and English, I find finishing one subject and then starting the other is much more effective.
People multitask because they get bored easily. No number of studies will be able to change this. For today’s teenager, staying on one task for a long period of time is very difficult. They constantly need to expose their mind to something new or they’ll get very bored and anxious. They only see the positive sides of studying, texting, eating, and watching TV all at the same time. Sure it may seem like they’re getting many things done at once but they are not paying full attention to any one task. In fact, multitasking causes people to waste a lot of time with useless tasks, such as watching a funny video on YouTube, instead of focusing on the main task at hand.
Teachers see students multitask all the time; they are even adapting their rules to the new era of multitasking. I remember back a few years ago when teachers discouraged students listening to music while doing in-class work. Nowadays, teachers don’t even mind when a student is listening to music during a lesson. I want to think teachers find multitasking ineffective, but their actions speak otherwise. Their allowance and even encouragement of multitasking in the classroom proves that they at least don’t think it’s ineffective. However, a lot of the older teachers are not in tune with the new generation of multitasking. This is probably because they didn't have all this technology to multitask with when they were younger. Whether a teacher is pro multitasking or not just boils down to their upbringing and their willingness to adapt to the changing society.
The fact that studies show that the brain just switches back and forth from one task to the other makes perfect sense. People who multitask are not actually texting with one hand and answering a math problem with the other at the same time. They are just rapidly switching back and forth from their textbook to their phone. As Dave Crenshaw likes to call it, they are "switch-tasking". Scientific studies have shown that multitasking doesn’t actually exist, and for this reason I think that multitasking will never be mastered. How can something nonexistent be mastered? With practice, people can become better and faster at switching back and forth between multiple tasks. However, no one will be able to give their full attention to multiple things at once.
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