7. Report SecondDraft

8/11/2019 7. Report SecondDraft

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SECOND DRAFT1 AUGUST 2013

Giving in to the Temptation:

Extending the Science of Media Multitasking toAcademics

In a generation where nothing is more tempting than a blinking chat-box or a buzzing

iPhone, todays youngster must learn to juggle several chores at once. Thats how the idea of

media multitasking the science of simultaneously tweeting followers, watching American

Idol, and solving trigonometry transpired. Nevertheless, American Psychological

Association recently pronounced that students who check Facebook at least once during a 15-

minute study period get lower grades. This report, however, is just the peak of the mountain of

researches over the years that speculate the same thing: that technological invasion largely

brings about rough repercussions to schoolwork. Perhaps, the best way to understand how the

culture of media multitasking extends to academics is by tracing the causes of the formers

emergence through clearly defining media multitasking and providing background of its

prevalence among youthand identifying its effectsthrough effectively mapping out how

the brain handles such activity, thus learning how it implicates teenage academic

performance.

As the myriad facets of media bombard the 21 stcentury, it is just imperative to acquire

a clear definition of what media multitasking is. Sprung from our technology-rich landscape,

this type of multitasking pertains to engaging in a certain form of media activity (e.g., web

surfing, watching TV or video gaming) in conjunction with another. Just as much as the media-

multitasking era affects busy adults in their professional lives, it is equally true for young adults

who have now turned into real experts at multitasking something which they even

ridiculously consider as a science.In 2006, The Kaiser Family Foundation reported in their

key findings that teenagers most likely utilize multiple media together when theyre instant

messaging and internet surfing. Overall, the probe grimly stated that our tech-savvy youth

combine, on average, 7.5 hours per day of media entertainment with academic pursuits. These

appalling figures are even compounded by American Life Projects statistics, which says 82%


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of todays kids are online by the seventh grade. Additionally, not only are they enticed by the

cyberspace, for you will now also rarely see a youngster deeply engrossed in a textbook

without clasping a cell phone. Denise Pope, head lecturer at the Stanford School of Education,

observed that, the minute the bell rings at most big public high schools, the first thing kids do

is reach into their bag and pick up their cell phone. Never mind that the person [they're

contacting] could be right down the hall." Without a doubt, media multitasking has now come

as a modern way of life.

Yet, tracing the causes behind this huge role played by media in youths present-day

lifestyle, particularly in their studies, is an arduous subject. The short attention span of young

people, their being easily attracted to technology, and their desire to be kept posted for whats

in are just some of the reasons conventionally seen by psychologists as the triggers for this

trend. Even so, recent studies unearthed more explanations behind this observable fact.

Donald Roberts, professor emeritus of communication at Stanford, remarks that their students

"can't go the few minutes between their 10 o'clock and 11 o'clock classes without talking on

their cell phones. He continued: It seems to me that there's almost a discomfort with not

being stimulateda kind of 'I can't stand the silence.'" Teenagers yearn to fill the void of the

reality by plugging in their virtual worlds with even the most mundane details of their lives.

Thus, this urge creates an extraordinary fit between the medium (social media) and the

moment, a heady, giddy fit in terms of social needs, in the words of Sherry Truckle, author of

The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit. True enough, our kids these days are so

wired into sites like Facebook that they prefer spending hours posting frivolous shout-outs in

their profiles to writing required papers in their classes. This is unmistakably an upshot of the

social network, where teenagers can also easily alter bits of information about themselves,

thereby projecting an entirely different persona. Because the hype over media increases rapidly

and youngsters just cant turn away from these distractions, understanding the causes of this

phenomenon is indeed critical in determining how it affects the academic scope.

In view of that, to absorb the gravity of this phenomenons implications to student life

first entails having a background on how the brain handles such activity. Generally, common


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sense dictates that a persons quality of work deteriorates when that persons mind attends to

ever more tasks at the same time. Neuroscience, with the advent of significant medical

breakthroughs, however, provides a more tangible concept regarding task processing-

execution course. Researches facilitated by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)

demonstrate that students who are chronic multitaskers do not engage higher-order areas,

primarily in the prefrontal cortex of brain, for storing and factoring information into response.

This consequently renders them less capable of grasping information from each individual

stimulus while multitasking. "Kids that are instant messaging while doing homework, playing

games online and watching TV, I predict, aren't going to do well in the long run," says Jordan

Grafman, chief of the neuroscience section at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders

and Stroke (NINDS). Too much media stimuli cause the brain to shut down neural connections

in order to shift focus. David E. Meyer, director of the Brain, Cognition and Action Laboratory

at the University of Michigan, attests: "If a teenager is trying to have a conversation on an e-

mail chat line while doing algebra, she'll suffer a decrease in cerebral efficiency, compared to

if she just thought about algebra until she was done. With such complicated tasks [you] will

never be able to overcome the inherent limitations in the brain for processing information

during multitasking. Unequivocally, mapping out the human brains mechanism in dealing

with multitasking is a key factor in effectively determining how students can possibly manage

media usage while studying.

Hence, this leaves us the big question: does media-plus-schoolwork multitasking

beget rough consequences to a students academics? The answer might just be a big yes.

Study reveals that students in middle school, high school and college, who use Facebook once

in every 15-minute study interval, obtain lower grade-point average. This is the contention of

the findings reported at the 119thannual convention of American Psychological Association

(APA), as spearheaded by Larry Rosen, a professor who specializes in the psychology of

technology at California State University. Moreover, making a habit of multitasking may

acclimatize a teenager in a state of volatility, making it difficult for him to concentrate on a task

even however hard he tries."People lose the skill and the will to maintain concentration, and


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they get inexorable antsyness," says Meyer. In their 2009 article in Scientific American,

Naomi Kenner and Russell Poldrack found another significant finding this time, the

correlation between the difficulty of sustaining focus and the less proficiency of learners in

activities that require reflection and analysis. The Institute for Developmental Psychobiology

explains that the same principle underlies the poor behavioral regulation among teenage

multitaskers, who usually also happen to be sleep-deprived owing to their having a buzzing

Smartphone next to their pillows. Such concerns have driven schools like University of

Virginia and University of California - Los Angeles to implement blocking of Internet access

during lectures. From the simple boredom at school to increasing dropout rates in both high

school and college levels, we can perceive how the high degree of technology invasion in

teenage standard of living escalates the forbidding effects of multitasking upon scholastic

excellence.

The bottom line of this pressing issue is that media multitasking doesbring about rough

repercussions to youths academic performance, far more than we may expect. Given the

evidences regarding the causes of this trends emergence and its effects to todays teens, it

would not be an exaggeration to call for an end to this culture of multitasking schoolwork with

the compulsive engagement to the virtual platform. Undoubtedly, living a life as a young

learner is now a matter of traversing the crossroads of technology without getting lost in this

digital world that one fails to voyage across the academic realm. It may be true that there is

nothing more tempting than a blinking chat-box or a buzzing iPhone nowadays, but we should

not also forget that it is still up to us if we will let ourselves give in to this temptation.

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