Whether Multitasking is a Productive Booster for Young Learners

In this modern time in history, multitasking as many tasks as possible within a set time frame, has become a necessary trait to be more efficient. Through the influence of technology, many believe multitasking is enhancing valuable skills that help with effective learning. However, in reality multi-tasking is destructive to young students. Multitasking dilutes a person’s focus whilst trying to complete tasks simultaneously. This results in lower quality and greater time taken to complete all the tasks, making multitasking inefficient. In addition, this dilution of focus is causing students to lack attention on school work. 

The Role of Multitasking in Learning Processes of Young Students

Technology is increasing the popularity of multitasking making it seem natural. This does not always mean multitasking is an advantageous skill. In fact, multitasking has caused many young learners to get easily distracted and resulted in failure to understand the concepts and processes of the finished task. According to Just et al., and Klingberg & Roland, it was found that the brain of participants who were engaged in multiple tasks had significantly lower activation energy compared to the sum of the activation areas when each of the tasks were performed independently. This lower activation has caused many students learning to become disrupted and unbale to complete tasks to good standards. Afterall, the spread of multitasking cannot be controlled if media itself is not willing to. Through the use of technology, media has made multitasking acceptable and normal as they have done nothing to prevent it, only encourage it. It was found in an index that, those who used media to multitask along established cognitive control dimensions, showed heavy media multitaskers were more influenced to distractions from unnecessary environmental stimuli and irrelevant representations in memory. This relates back to school students who are multitasking, as it is causing them to become even more ineffective. Furthermore, it can be concluded that people especially school students cannot multitask in general as it not natural and causes lower activation energy in the brain causing greater distractions. Through multitasking, efficiency and performance are both sacrificed within school learning.

Multitasking is lowering efficiency and performance within school learning. Schools acquire better efficiency and performance in their task to make learning more enjoyable. But this method has its own flaws as students who follow this either end up not finishing tasks or finish to an unacceptable level. According to a study conducted on school children, those who multitasked constantly outside of school by watching television, playing with friends and other activities, were reported to not finish homework 77% of the time, whereas those students who were alone with no distractions performed 65%. Young learners who multitask distribute their focus from unfinished work to concentrate on other work without ever realising it. The information required for the task that they have been working initially will mostly likely have been forgotten causing them failure in learning. Students with laptops opened during a lecture who were involved in browsing, search, and/or social computing suffered documents on traditional measures of memory for the lecture content.

According to Hembrooks’s and Gay’s study, “limitations in the information that can be attended to, processed, or encoded, that there was not overlap at the time of retrieval for the information to recognize or recall the to-be- remembered information”. Furthermore, it can be concluded that school students cannot multitask as it causes lower efficiency and lower performance when doing tasks. Multitasking causes students forgetting all the information gained as useless or combining all knowledge, both unnecessary and essential.

The combined knowledge of various tasks has caused a lower attention span for young learners to get distracted. In a study performed on students, it was found that students who didn’t multitask, were striving for meaning and understanding as they became more interested in the meaning within the academic task, whereas the surface users who were instrumental, reproductive and minimalistic saw tasks as a demand that had to be met, and focused mainly on the time taken. It is foreseeable that tasks that require greater understanding and fluency take more time and progress compared to those who didn’t multitask. This is causes students who multitask to lose valuable time, which in return is causing them to lack attention within one task, as multitasking makes them want to finish faster. More importantly work is not getting finished to the full standard as students rush through work whilst multitasking causing them to be ineffective. The result of this has cost teachers to give no marks to those who use technology in class, as one claims, 'I think their response is too regulatory, but obviously, the classroom is becoming more of an open marketplace and less of a sanctuary'. Therefore, those who try and finish multiple assignments or tasks generate more work for themselves resulting in la lower attention span. Multitasking causes health problems that occur when the habits are reoccurring within classes.

Conclusion

While it is possible that multitasking can have its positive sides, schools should not encourage multitasking as a method of producing effective workers, due to the inability for one to multitask naturally, the prevention of efficiency and performance, the lack of attention and the negative health effects it has to learning.

References

• Junco, R., & Cotten, S. R. (2012). No A 4 U: The relationship between multitasking and academic performance. Computers & Education, 59(2), 505-514.

• Uncapher, M. R., Thieu, M. K., & Wagner, A. D. (2016). Media multitasking and memory: Differences in working memory and long-term memory. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 23(2), 483-490.

• Carrier, L. M., Cheever, N. A., Rosen, L. D., Benitez, S., & Chang, J. (2009). Multitasking across generations: Multitasking choices and difficulty ratings in three generations of Americans. Computers in Human Behavior, 25(2), 483-489.

• Cain, M. S., & Mitroff, S. R. (2011). Memory for found targets interferes with subsequent performance in multiple-target visual search. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 37(4), 1009-1015.

• Ophir, E., Nass, C., & Wagner, A. D. (2009). Cognitive control in media multitaskers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(37), 15583-15587.

• Foerde, K., Knowlton, B. J., & Poldrack, R. A. (2006). Modulation of competing memory systems by distraction. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 103(31), 11778-11783.

• Lee, J., Lin, L., & Robertson, T. (2012). Media multitasking and implicit learning. Computers in Human Behavior, 28(6), 2188-2195.

• Rosen, L. D., Lim, A. F., Carrier, L. M., & Cheever, N. A. (2011). An empirical examination of the educational impact of text message-induced task switching in the classroom: Educational implications and strategies to enhance learning. Psicología Educativa, 17(2), 163-177.

• Minear, M., Brasher, F., McCurdy, M., Lewis, J., & Younggren, A. (2013). Working memory, fluid intelligence, and impulsiveness in heavy media multitaskers. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 20(6), 1274-1281.

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• Sana, F., Weston, T., & Cepeda, N. J. (2013). Laptop multitasking hinders classroom learning for both users and nearby peers. Computers & Education, 62, 24-31.