In 1996, I was working at Microsoft in Seattle and teaching a graduate student seminar at NYU in the Interactive Telecommunications Program. I noticed that at Microsoft, some of my colleagues had two screens, but each screen only had one thing running; either email, a spreadsheet, or a word processor. At NYU, students had one screen and it was tiled with open windows: instant messaging, email, chat, and more. In many cases, the students were also carrying pagers and cell phones, and juggling the many incoming communications.
In the media, there was already a conversation about multitasking, but what I was witnessing went far beyond the simple multitasking that people were fretting over. With simple multitasking, we are engaging in an activity that’s automatic (like stirring soup, tying a shoe – anything that we can do without taxing ourselves mentally), and another activity that is somewhat mentally taxing (a phone conversation, writing an email, etc). Many moments, most days, involve a lot of simple multitasking.
What I witnessed people doing was beyond simple multitasking, and in order to differentiate it from simple multitasking, I gave it a new label: continuous partial attention. We were continuously paying partial attention to more than one activity that was mentally taxing.
With continuous partial attention, we engage in two or more activities that are mentally taxing (also called cognitive load). For example, we are writing an email and having a phone conversation.
Both in the case of simple multitasking and continuous partial attention, we are not doing these tasks simultaneously. We are rapidly task switching. Thus, the “myth of multitasking.”
With continuous partial attention, as we rapidly task switch, we experience more physical and mental stress. When we do this day after day, for hours on end, and, often attempting to do multiple activities on multiple screens, our body experiences a chronic fight or flight state, or stressed state (there are a number of posts, videos, and a FAQ on my website that explain this more fully).
A recent Stanford study suggests that heavy multitasking contributes to reduced memory, decreased ability to focus, compromised reasoning, and sleep and mood changes.
In 2012, German neuroscientist, Manfred Spitzer, created the term, digital dementia, to describe the health costs resulting from the chronic stress, multitasking, and compromised breathing we do when we work with personal technologies.
Since 1996, I’ve been speaking and writing about attention, technology, and health. We intend to do our best to manage our time online, to take breaks from our smartphones and screens and to get up frequently to move, and give our eyes and bodies a few minutes of recovery time during the course of a day. But. We. Don’t.
How can we better support ourselves given that we are likely to keep multitasking? What activities might serve as antidotes to digital dementia?
My favorite antidote is partner or ballroom dancing. There is preliminary research suggesting that ballroom dancing can decrease your risk of dementia by 76%. Ballroom dancing is physically, socially, and mentally challenging. Compared with walking, dancing has been associated with reduced brain atrophy in the hippocampus – a brain region that is key to memory and functioning.
Social partner dancing reduces social isolation and inactivity. It’s one of the most restorative activities we can do to minimize the health costs of multitasking, continuous partial attention, and hours in front of screens.
Here’s a recent CBS interview with Dr. Jon LaPook on multitasking and ballroom dancing.
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/multitasking-myth-research-expert/
“Dance is the joy of movement and the heart of life.” — unknown
Linda Stone 