Not everyone has joined in on the hype of social media sites such as Facebook including junior history major Katelyn Myhre.
“Facebook started when I was young and my mom was against that kind of stuff,” Myhre said. “Over time I’ve never felt like I needed one even if people around me made it seem cool.”
In a study done by the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America heavy and light media multitaskers were compared to each other. The studies showed that heavy multitaskers are more easily distracted by irrelevant stimuli and form less accurate memories of events.
A heavy Facebook user, Erin Slackway, a psychology major at Lycoming College, realized in the middle of the spring 2015 semester that social media and school were conflicting with her concentration.
“I use Facebook at least two or three times a day and I find hours go by on Facebook without my even realizing it,” Slackway said. “It started getting in the way of my school work so I decided to deactivate [my profile].”
Slackway is not alone in struggling from jumping between social media and course work that requires focus. Task-switching was proven to be more difficult for heavy media multitaskers as they responded 426 ms slower to switch trials in the study.
The results of the study are not all bad for high media multitaskers though. These people are likely more distracted than lighter users but the authors said, “It remains possible that future tests of higher-order cognition will uncover benefits, other than cognitive control, of heavy media multitasking, or will uncover skills specifically exhibited by HMMs not involving cognitive control.”
Professor of psychology Dr. Anthony Tomasco takes a different approach than the study when looking at the impact of social media. In May of 2014, Psychology Today reported that people cannot actually multitask.
“Cognitive science has told us very clearly that attention is an important component of beginning any kind of perceptual level of problem-solving task. Therefore you can only attend to one thing at a time,” Tomasco said.
One example of the benefits of social media is Slackway’s art page where she promotes her work. She hopes that through connecting with people online she can reach a larger number of potential buyers when she decides to sell her pieces, and this audience could not be reached easily without the use of social media sites.
“Anybody can look around the world today and realize the impact that social media has had on the way in which we behave,” Tomasco said. “For the most part we’d assume that there must be something very positive out there that’s happening when people make connections because it almost becomes habitual if not addictive.”
Tomasco also said that he has observed social media as more of a distraction for students over recent years than a reason to multitask.
Whether it is multitasking as the study suggests or a distraction as psychology suggests, the development of social media has changed the way users think. Even though there are benefits, a break from the sites can be helpful, which is something that Slackway has discovered.
“I felt, I guess, better, like I had more free time and not so much tying me down,” Slackway said. “I might deactivate [my Facebook] again at some point.”
Myhre is still not convinced that using social media offers enough benefits to outweigh the negatives that come along with them.
“I think we’re heading in a pretty bad course because we’re becoming more and more dependent on technology,” Myhre said. “I’ve thought about getting a Facebook because everything on campus has one, but after college I think I’ll be less tempted to get [a Facebook].”
