But people don't
multitask solely because they see no harm in it; they perceive benefits.
The 11-13 year-olds represented 42.4% of HMMHW group; thus confirming high prevalence of MM among early adolescents found in prior investigations (Baumgartner et al., 2017) which can be explained with the lower self-regulatory skills to control impulses to
multitask of younger adolescents.
Some studies have found that women are more likely to media
multitask compared with men (e.g., Duff, Yoon, Wang, & Anghelcev, 2014; Hwang, Kim, & Jeong, 2014; Jeong & Fishbein, 2007), one study has found that men
multitask more than women (Segijn et al., 2017),and other studies have found no significant differences between men and women in the amount of media multitasking (e.g., Kononova, 2013; Voorveld et al., 2014).
Many participants talk about the "right way" of multitasking or about being "able to"
multitask or to control their level of multitasking, indicating that a person could be better or worse at multitasking.
The review of the above literature suggests that the ability to
multitask depends on the consistency between tasks and personal schema.
They found that study participants who reported most frequently using media to
multitask had lower density in the gray matter of a brain region called the anterior cingulate cortex, a region involved in emotional control and thinking.
How can you not
multitask when five people want five different things from you at the same time?
More and more evidence is emerging from neuroscience that the brain simply doesn't
multitask well.
Clifford Nass, a Stanford University professor who has done some of this research, says that people who
multitask all the time can't filter out irrelevancy and may even become chronically distracted.
"I
multitask through less important work, or work that requires less focus," says Duffy.
We don't actually
multitask. We switch-task, rapidly shifting from one thing to another, interrupting ourselves unproductively and losing time in the process."
The purpose of this research was to examine how instant messaging affects reading comprehension and reading efficiency and to further address whether adults can effectively
multitask.