Studies show that this not only distracts us for the amount of time we take off our work, but also drain our brain power. These interruptions make us dumber. If we do two things at once, both efforts suffer. It has been found that a typical office worker gets only 11 minutes between interruptions, but it takes an average of 25 minutes to return to the original task at hand.
A study by Alessandro Acquisti, a professor of information technology, and the psychologist Eyal Peer at Carnegie Mellon, used 136 subjects. These subjects were split into three groups and were to read a short story passage and answer the following questions about it. One group merely completed the test. The other two were told they "might be contacted for further instructions" at any moment via text, and they were interrupted twice during the first test. The groups that were interrupted answered 20% less than the control group because of the distraction combined with the brain drain of preparing for that interruption.
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What an interesting article! I also found an article about how social media affects the brain. I learned that posting about yourself releases dopamine, a chemical that makes you happy. Posting about your daily life also brings you motivation, pleasure, and better fine motor skills.
ReplyDeletehttp://edudemic.com/2012/12/how-using-social-media-affects-your-brain/
I do not find this very surprising. I can see that kids who use their phones in class do not work well. I have seen people check their phones more than they do actual work. I also know that the way you notice sounds is that neurons fire in your brain of how obvious something is. A loud noise will set off more neurons than a mouse's squeak. The more neurons that fire, the more you notice something.
ReplyDeleteWow, this is kind of interesting because I was just reading an article about this same exact situation, where peoople were tested and interruptions were set to occur so they can record results. The scientist doing this research said "email and text messages come at the expense of getting good work done." Here is the link to the atricle I was reading. http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/do-interruptions-zap-our-brain-power-yes-a-lot-of-it
ReplyDeleteIt's not very surprising that internet in general is very distracting, and the easy access to the internet is very disturbing these days. Everyday, my quick 2 minutes of checking Facebook for notifications turns into an hour. It usually then takes me awhile to get back to what I was doing. As irresponsible as this sounds, when I'm scrolling through Tumblr, Twitter, or Instagram during class, I barely know what is going around me.
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