Multitasking: sacrificing quality

By Julie Herman

It's ten thirty at night and I'm writing this article, reading an essay on critical literacy, explaining the essay to a classmate over Facebook, outlining another paper on a completely different subject and theorizing with my roommate what will be on our mechanical engineering midterm tomorrow.

I sporadically shift between windows with the "ping" of Facebook chat and, to be perfectly honest, I'm not getting all that much done­ — despite all of my tasks technically being "productive."

In this digital age, it has become much easier to multitask. The Internet and its social media mechanisms allow for easy access to everything­ — articles that could be relevant to a paper, recipes for dinner, a funny picture of a cat — and they allow for it all at once. Add a Smart Phone into the equation and all personal communication, all knowledge and all entertainment are readily accessible at any moment. Why not do everything at the same time? Wouldn't that save a few seconds that could later be put to better use?

In reality, this is not true. If anything, the little  time it takes to jump from one thing to the next and reorient to a new task takes more time.

Educational studies have shown that skipping around to many different subjects results in forgetfulness.

This mode of speed-thinking only results in superficiality. When the focus becomes saving time and doing more, rather than digesting material fully and focusing on quality instead of quantity, the experience loses much of it value.

Take, for example, the act of reading the news. If you skim through it while listening to someone talk, you will likely notice that a royal couple tied the knot and United States forces finally took out Osama bin Laden. However, if your full concentration is on the news alone, you may pick up other interesting details such as where Bin Laden was found, how long the CIA suspected he was hiding there or how the United States' actions display our tension with Pakistan.

While it's valuable to learn that Bin Laden was captured, it's even more valuable to know details like the manner in which he died, and which country he was found in.

However most people's knowledge on the topic is not that extensive and yet many people will attempt to make value judgments regarding the event even with the little information they have. They will judge the event as unequivocally good without considering Pakistan or which leader will rise to replace Bin Laden.  Or theymay fail to understand the extent to which this event has reunited the U.S. and will judge his death as unequivocally bad.

This may seem to be minor ignorance, a small consequence to pay for people who undoubtedly spent the time they weren't reading about Bin Laden's death doing other productive activities. Even so, the issue of quantity over quality has many problems.

Multitasking ends here — a populace without direction that understands many things slightly, but nothing well.

This population may begin rich and powerful, but it will end up doing very little and not understanding the little it does.

Julie Herman is a a freshman undeclared major.