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The Monsters of Multi-tasking: How Technology Consumption Consumes College Students

Sometimes, multi-tasking is more maddening and distracting than it is beneficial to college students.

May 1, 2015 Jessica Kennedy Leave a Comment

The article’s author, Clay Shirky, says that while multitasking can satisfy immediate emotional gratification, it has “negative long-term effects on declarative memory, the kind of focused recall that lets people characterize and use what they learned from earlier studying.”

He says college students think multitasking will help them get more work done, when in reality, it is declining their memory and productiveness.

He also says this is most pertinent in the amount of social media college kids consume and participate in, especially when students bring their own devices to class. Students are biologically hard-wired to be distracted by and respond to social media alerts and let’s face it, social media is generally more interesting than college professor’s lecture.

What does this all mean?

Based on my personal experience with college and reflections on the Business Insider article, I think the multitasking culture is training students to participate in and maintain hectic technology usage. I think it causes students to become overwhelmed about school, their personal lives and the world, especially the world after college.

I think that colleges have power to get multitasking under control and better equip students with balancing skills. Similar to Shirky’s solution, college can invite students to bring their devices to class only if they are needed for a specific lesson, or restrict social media access until after class. Doing so will help students clear their heads and engage in a lesson more brightly. The weight of multitasking will be lifted, and students’ technology usage will become more diluted.

Our brains need time to recharge and drain extraneous information to get back on point. They need a break from distractions and the super-stimuli devices and social media create.They need a chance to be in the now, outside of a device’s screen.

Technology is great and BYOD is a powerful tool in the classroom, but we have to remember to be human once in a while.

…

Video: Thoughts on multitasking – give your brain a break.

https://youtu.be/BtYiDIJGI8A

Pages: Page 1 Page 2

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Jessica Kennedy
Jessica Kennedy

Jessica Kennedy is an editor at TechDecisions Media, targeting the higher education market. Jessica joined the TechDecisions team in 2014 and covers technologies that improve teaching and learning.

Tagged With: BYOD, Higher Ed, Social Media

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