It's Not Just Rude, It's Ruining Your Brain [View all]

[madokie]

Is it rude to be constantly checking messages while you're socializing with someone else? That's a matter of opinion. But a professor friend emails to remind me that rudeness is actually the least of the problems with the perpetual multitasking of the smartphone generation:

This is the way kids these days think. My administration calls it "the millennial student" and apparently we are supposed to cater to their habits. Fully half of my 60 person general physics class this semester sits in the back of the room on either phone or laptop. They're not taking notes. The good ones are working on assignments for other classes (as if being present in mine causes the information to enter their pores). The bad are giggling at Facebook comments.

....But here's the thing: there is convincing evidence that this inveterate multitasking has a serious, measurable and long lasting negative effect on cognitive function. Look up Stanford psychologist Clifford Nass sometime. There's a lovely episode of Frontline from a year or so ago featuring him. He has shown that multitaskers are not only bad at multitasking, but they are also worse than nonmultitaskers on every individual one of the tasks.

That's the millennial student and it isn't something to be catered to. Put the damn iPhone down before you make yourself stupid.

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/04/its-not-just-rude-its-ruining-your-brain