On Multitasking

http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/25/tech/social-media/multitasking-kids/index.html?hpt=hp_bn6


(CNN) -- FaceTime, the Apple video-chat application, is not
a replacement for real human interaction, especially for children,
according to a new study.

Tween girls who spend much
of their waking hours switching frantically between YouTube, Facebook,
television and text messaging are more likely to develop social
problems, says a Stanford University study published in a scientific
journal on Wednesday.

Young girls who spend the
most time multitasking between various digital devices, communicating
online or watching video are the least likely to develop normal social
tendencies, according to the survey of 3,461 American girls aged 8 to 12
who volunteered responses.

The study only included
girls who responded to a survey in Discovery Girls magazine, but results
should apply to boys, too, Clifford Nass, a Stanford professor of
communications who worked on the study, said in a phone interview. Boys'
emotional development is more difficult to analyze because male social
development varies widely and over a longer time period, he said.

"No one had ever looked at
this, which really shocked us," Nass said. "Kids have to learn about
emotion, and the way they do that, really, is by paying attention to
other people. They have to really look them in the eye."

The antidote for this
hyper-digital phenomenon is for children to spend plenty of time
interacting face-to-face with people, the study found. Tweens in the
study who regularly talked in person with friends and family were less
likely to display social problems, according to the findings in the
publication Developmental Psychology.

"If you eschew
face-to-face communication, you don't learn critical things that you
have to learn," Nass said. "You have to learn social skills. You have to
learn about emotion."

The Stanford researchers
were not able to determine a magic number of hours that children should
spend conversing per week, Nass said. Social skills are typically only
learned when children are engaged and making eye contact, rather than
fiddling with an iPod during a conversation, he said.

FaceTime and Skype are not
replacements for actual face time because other studies have found that
people tend to multitask while on video calls, Nass said.

Nass is a self-described
technologist of 25 years, who has worked as a consultant with many major
electronics firms, including Google and Microsoft. He said the findings
disturbed him.

A few years ago, Nass worked on a study about how multitasking affects
adults. He found that heavy multitaskers experience cognitive issues,
such as difficulty focusing and remembering things. They were actually
worse at juggling various activities, a skill crucial to many people's
work lives, than those who spent less time multitasking, Nass said.