Attention, Multitasking, and Neural Addiction in the Internet Age
Author: Ken Homer Issue: 2022-06-15
Attention, Multitasking, and Neural Addiction in the Internet Age
by Ken Homer
The ubiquity of always on, always-on-you, always connected technology in the form of smart phones and mobile devices has radically transformed the landscape of human interaction, and of the human mind and body as well. Tech companies have invested hundreds of millions of dollars studying the best way to capture someone’s attention when they are facing a screen. They’ve learned that playing a sound while flashing something shiny into the upper right visual field is stunningly effective in attracting our attention. But it comes with a high cognitive price tag attached.
According to Daniel J. Levitin, author of The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload, as soon as we see that someone has sent us a text or email, most of us drop whatever we are doing and respond to the interruption. People think that having their browser, Slack, Facebook, Twitter, email and instant messaging programs all running behind whatever other work application they have open allows them to multitask, and thus be more productive. The research is showing that the reality is just the opposite: multitasking fragments and reduces our attention span and it does so in harmful and possibly irreversible ways. Multitasking:
- Can cause new information to be processed by the wrong part of the brain.
- Can lower our intelligence by as much as ten IQ points.
- Because it requires decision making, multitasking tires us out faster than monotasking.
- Increases the production of the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline which reduce our ability to access the executive functions that we need for demanding mental tasks.
Most insidiously, it activates a dopamine-addiction feedback loop that rewards the brain for losing focus. And let’s not forget that multitasking produces work of inferior quality compared what would be achieved if we stayed focused on a single task from start to finish. If it’s so bad for us, why do we do it?
This short excerpt from Levitin’s book posted in The Guardian gives us a clue:
Each time we dispatch an email in one way or another, we feel a sense of accomplishment, and our brain gets a dollop of reward hormones telling us we accomplished something. Each time we check a Twitter feed or Facebook update, we encounter something novel and feel more connected socially (in a kind of weird, impersonal cyber way) and get another dollop of reward hormones. But remember, it is the dumb, novelty-seeking portion of the brain driving the limbic system that induces this feeling of pleasure, not the planning, scheduling, higher-level thought centres in the prefrontal cortex. Make no mistake: email-, Facebook- and Twitter-checking constitute a neural addiction.Want to get more done in less time?
Turn on the do not disturb feature on your phone and computer. Focus on one task at a time and close it up before moving to your next item or project. Set a timer for 90 minutes and then take a five minute break to walk around and stretch. I am the first to admit that this is hard to do and I am not always successful. However, I have learned that when I really need to focus and get something done, these simple steps are tremendously helpful.
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