If you’re reading on your computer right now, you probably have several tabs open. In addition to social media windows, you probably also have email and pages from other websites open. In fact, some people even work with more than a dozen windows open.
However, it is best to close them all and focus on this article for the next few minutes. Close social media, email, music apps, and try not to open another tab before you finish, and don’t even look at your phone, which will probably be lying next to you on the table.
You may find it difficult because it has become a habit and your neural networks are already predisposed to jump from one activity to another. However, multitasking can damage your brain, as confirmed by several studies.
In reality, tabs are just a metaphor that extends to real life. With the advent of the Internet and new technologies, the world has started to spin so fast that we have been forced to change our natural rhythm. We are getting used to constant distraction and it is becoming more and more difficult for us to concentrate on a single task, we prefer to jump from one to another.
This habit, which comes mainly from the Internet, is being applied in our daily lives. However, the truth is that our brain has a limited capacity and is not able to keep up with this pace, or at least not effectively. Although we often forget this.
Are there really people who are more gifted at multitasking?
There are those who believe that there are people who have a special ability to do several things at once. To test whether this is true or just a myth, researchers at Stanford University compared different groups of people, some of whom were in the habit of multitasking on the computer and thought that this made them more productive.
However, the data proved them wrong. In fact, multitaskers performed worse than those who limited themselves to doing one task at a time. Why?
The experiment showed that people who do several things at once have:
– Greater difficulty organizing information and giving a logical order to thoughts.
– Difficulties in filtering out irrelevant information, which means they end up handling more data than necessary.
– Slower performance when disconnecting from one task to connect to another.
Multitasking therefore reduces our efficiency because our brain simply cannot concentrate on different tasks at the same time and do them well.
Everything seems to indicate that when we are bombarded with information, not only do we pay less attention but we also find it more difficult to remember the information. Therefore, there are no people who are more gifted at multitasking, only people who force themselves to do several things at once, but that does not mean that they are more efficient or productive, quite the contrary.
Permanent brain damage
Brain damage caused by multitasking was once thought to be temporary, but now a study at the University of Sussex suggests it may be permanent. Researchers scanned the brains of people who spent a lot of time using different devices at the same time, such as a TV and a mobile phone, or having several windows open on a computer and switching between them.
They found that the greater the degree of multitasking, the lower the neuronal density in the anterior cingulate cortex, a region involved in controlling autonomic functions such as blood pressure and heart rate but also decision-making, empathy and emotions.
Neuroscientists are certain that when multitasking becomes a habit, it irreparably damages some areas of our brain, causing problems with attention and memory and decreasing our emotional control, making us more irritable and irascible people.
Electronic multitasking: More dangerous than marijuana for intelligence
The effects of bad Internet habits and inappropriate use of electronic devices do not end there. Another study, this time conducted at the Institute of Psychiatry at the University of London, revealed that electronic multitasking is more dangerous for our intelligence than marijuana.
These psychologists studied more than 1,000 workers at the electronics company Hewlett-Packard and discovered that multitasking in a virtual environment causes a drop in IQ, much greater than that produced by consuming marijuana or having sleep problems. In fact, it can drop by an average of 10 points, so that after a full day of work, the IQ of some workers could be compared to that of an 8-year-old child. These are certainly not very encouraging results.
Moral: Cognitive energy is a precious resource and we are not exactly in abundance of it. Therefore, to be more effective and take care of our brain, it is best to concentrate on one task at a time and, when we have finished, move on to the next. This way you will not only make much more progress but at the end of the day you will feel less exhausted.
Sources:
Kee, K. & Kanai, R. (2014) High media multi-tasking is associated with smaller gray-matter density in the anterior cingulate cortex. Plos One ; 9(9).
Ophir, E. et. Al. (2009) Cognitive control in media multitaskers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ; 106(37): 15583–15587.
Wilson, G. (2005) Abuse of technology can reduce UK workers’ intelligence: HP calls for more appropriate use of always-on technology to improve productivity. UK. Hewlett Packard study.
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