The distraction caused by the internet and social media has been a topic of intense debate. The argument is that the proliferation of the internet and increased access to information has reduced the human attention span to that of goldfish.
The claim is interesting for two reasons. At first, it points to humans and then to goldfish! Has the human brain/memory capacity now reduced to that of a goldfish? After all, what is goldfish memory, and is that too short? I don’t think either of these propositions is accurate; the claim on the fish is likely a fallacy (like “the doctrine of signature”.) You got confused by the frequent change of direction of the fish with its memory!
Cognitive Abilities of Multitaskers
Now, back to the topic of this post: in 2009, researchers at Stanford University published a paper titled “Cognitive control in media multitaskers” in PNAS ( Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America).
The researchers chose two groups of individuals belonging to “Heavy Media Multitaskers (HMM)” and “Light Media Multitaskers (LMM)” and assigned tasks to find out the speed and accuracy of their performance. They also added distractors in the tasks as additional variables.
Multitaskers Lose out in Filtering Distractions
The speed and accuracy of both teams were comparable for the basic test. However, when researchers added irrelevant elements (distractions) to the tasks, the groups performed differently. The heavy multitaskers started making more errors, albeit maintaining the speed.
The results are indicators that the heavy multitaskers had difficulties filtering out irrelevant stimuli. But, is the study evidence to our original question on the information overflow and attention span? My answer is a firm no. I agree that the study showed a definite association between the two, but insufficient to make conclusions.
Causations or just Correlations?
Does the study prove that the internet destroys human memory? I will argue no. While the study confirms the association well, it is not sufficient to establish the root cause. What if the group of heavy multitaskers are prone to distraction by default? In other words, can you not conclude that their special cognitive features (hormonal, neurological make-up), which made them vulnerable to distractions, helped them to get into multitasking in the first place? In that case, the study proved the obvious or quite the opposite.
However, the results can make one mindful of the triggers around us, be it the countless click-bait of the internet or the use of multiple screens in the workspace. The study also reaffirms that irrespective of information overflow, multitasking is an individual’s choice, but know the price you pay, i.e., accuracy.
