Paige Mason
English 110 H6
10-14-17
Paper 2 First Draft
The Cons to The Digital World
Young American do not benefit from the digital world because it interrupts their attention leading to disastrous consequences. With advancements in the technological world instead of pushing our minds to see and think in new ways we are now over stimulating our brain making it divide into too many parts due to our mythical thinking’s towards multitasking.
Multitasking in a myth that we have accepted and incorporated in our everyday lives. The concern with this is that young adults today believe that they can handle doing two talks at once. What they don’t know is that the brain doesn’t have the capacity to withstand more than one task being thrown its way. In Defense of Distraction by Sam Anderson he talks about his conversation with David Meyer, expert on multitasking. Meyer and other researchers have proved over and over again that multitasking is in fact a myth. Because the brain processes the different kinds of important on separate channels such as visual channel, language channel, auditory channel and more, each channel is only able to process one track of important at one time. Meyers puts it as this “if you over burden a channel the brain becomes inefficient and mistake prone.” Americans today disregard this truth and believe they are invincible to making mistakes and being inefficient. This shows when people are talking on the phone while driving. People think that they can text and drive but actually they can’t. Since the brain as we know can only process one stream of information at a time talking on the phone and driving shouldn’t be happening. Especially because dialing and steering are both manual tasks, and looking out the windshield and reading a phone screen are both visual channels. Wouldn’t you think that people would learn from hearing about texting while driving accidents that our bodies can’t handle more than one task at a time?
Another thing that multitasking affects more sometimes we want to admit is our productivity. There are so many things out there that will stall our productivity. This is a problem, a huge one. If someone’s constantly multitasking, their efficiency, of getting whatever they are doing done goes way down. But how can anyone get anything done when you have the internet around.
The internet is engineered to help us feed into our distractions. Whether your checking the weather for tomorrow, or checking the score of the game, or looking at that funny new meme, you’re distracted. Yes, sometimes the distractions make you happy, but the point is you’re distracted and you’re not focusing on what is at task. The internet provides “little rewards” as Anderson says in Defense against “It dispenses its never-ending little shots of positivity- a life-changing e-mail here, a funny YouTube video there-in glorious unpredictable cycles”.
This need to click open all those tabs has basically become an addiction. A quintessence solution to solve this inability to focus would be to just dope our brains to focus. Over years and years this is now the norm to use substances from tea to neuro enhancers. This shuts off the desire to check those tabs. But taking drugs isn’t going to help in the long run. These addictive qualities of the internet make it hard to have the will power against distractions.
At a certain point though, it’s important to understand the fine line of the technology being the problem and yourself being the problem.
With such high demands on attention we are now creating a society with ADHD. The major change now we see it when it comes to the personality characteristics. Once categorized at dysfunctional (hyperactivity, impulsiveness and easy distractibility) is now what we see every day and is almost the norm. By feeding into the demands that our society has created for ourselves and specifically for our brains we are allowing our brains to run ragged and work overtime. Civilization is unhealthily living with short attention span. Stewart Brand a noted commentator on technology and social change believes that this short attention span trend is most likely coming from “the acceleration of technology”. ADD expert Paul Walker even says that “The attention span of the actual adult is greatly exaggerated”. As a society, we are not helping ourselves out when we actually need to. The key to helping ourselves though is having strong executive function. It’s all about making conscious decisions. We all have an executive function but it actually using it is where we lack. The reason why It is so important to have a good executive function is so in situations where you could be distracted (noisy construction during a meeting, a loud bird while having a conversation, distractions of tabs on laptops) you can have the power to ignore it. Winifred Gallagher, the author of Rapt believes in her mind that “The most promising solution to our attention problem is also the most ancient: meditation”. This is because meditation makes the brain less “sticky”, meaning it would now see the quick flashing images that our brains would miss before. This is also not the only reason why meditation is so recommended. It has also been shown to boost your mood which would also fuel your attention. Research has been shown that having positive emotions can allow your visual field to expand.
Many readers say that Americans do benefit from the digital world. Communication, Information and Innovation are all positives aspects we get with living in a digital world. Communication has no barriers these days. Time and location hold no boundaries when communicating with families, friends, coworkers anymore. Technology has allowed us to be able to communicate whenever and wherever we want. Another positive aspect to living in a digital world is how quickly information can be received. One click of a button and you can see videos, pictures, stories, podcasts about what’s going on in the world. Lastly Innovation. Living in a digital world has allowed Innovation to soar.
