To answer the question of whether the Internet is shortening our attention, first do the following
Unit 9: disc 2
a.To answer the question of whether the Internet is shortening our attention, first do the following:
1.Read Thorin Klosowski’s (2012) article, “Is the Internet Really Making Me Stupid, Psychotic, and Constantly Distracted?”
2.Read Vishaka Muhunthan’s (2013) article, “Well It’s Too Late Now: What the Internet Has Done to Our Minds.”
3.Read Tom Stafford’s (2012) article, “Does the Internet Rewire Your Brain?”
4.Read Fergus Kane’s (2017) article, “After Reading This, Your Brain Will Never Be the Same.”
5.Read Daniel Willingham’s (2015) article, “Smartphones Don’t Make Us Dumb.”
6.Conduct, on yourself or a friend, Brooks’ Multi-Tasking (1968) Experiment.
7.Watch Safely Home’s brief (2017) YouTube video, “No Call or Text Is Worth Your Life. #ItCanWait.”
8.Read Herwick’s (2021) article, “Computers Gave Us The Word Multitasking, But Can We Actually Do It?“
9.Read the abstract of Bendner et al.’s (2017) article, “Dynamic, Continuous Multitasking Training Leads to Task-Specific Improvements but Does Not Transfer across Action Selection Tasks.”
10.Read Science Daily’s (2011) article, “Brief Diversions Vastly Improve Focus,” which reports the empirically proven benefits of taking brief breaks on attention (in general).
11.Read these abstracts, each of which reports the empirically proven benefits of employees taking brief Internet-related breaks on their workplace attention and productivity.
b.Next, watch Professor Gernsbacher’s lecture video “How Is the Internet Affecting Our Attention” [a captioned version is here, and a transcript is available here].
oFor a very recent meta-analysis (remember that a meta-analysis is the strongest level of empirical proof) demonstrating that neither children’s nor adults’ attentional capacities have worsened after the onset of the Internet, see Andrzejewski et al.’s (2024) abstract reporting the results of 287 studies with over 21,000 research participants from 32 different countries.
oThat is not to say that people might not think that their attentional capacities have changed. College students report being more distracted. However, high-quality empirical studies using standardized tests fail to show any worsening of attentional capacities post-onset of the Internet (see also this graph from Wongupparaj et al., 2017, also showing no decrease in attentional capacity in a meta-analysis of nearly 140,000 research participants).
oAs UW-Madison Professor Shawn Green, an expert on attention, cautions: It’s important to not conclude from studies, like this one, that just because people are now able to switch between tasks on their computers when their computers didn’t allow task switching before, that doesn’t mean that people are now less able to sustain attention if they want or need to. Making that false assumption is similar to saying that “children used to walk to school even if they lived as far as 2 miles away, but now children only walk to school if they live less than 0.25 miles away; therefore, kids today can’t walk as far.”
c.Go to the Unit 9: Assignment #2 Discussion Board and create a new post of at least 200 words in which you discuss one of the 12 points made in Professor Gernsbacher’s video (and expanded upon in the articles you read, video you watched, or the Brooks’ Multi-Tasking Experiment you conducted on yourself or a friend)
2.You must refer to the articles you read, the video you watched, or the Brooks’ Multi-Tasking Experiment that you conducted that are most relevant to the point you choose. Be sure to refer to the articles, video, or experiment with the authors’ names.
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