Muddled Multitasking.

• Author: Grabmeier, Jeff
• Position: HITTING THE BOOKS

MULTTTASKING makes adolescents feel both more positively and more negatively about the main task they are trying to accomplish, maintains a study at Ohio State University. However, the study--which examined young people's actual multitasking behaviors over two weeks--found that only the positive emotions affected whether young people choose to combine tasks later. For example, it was found that when adolescents combined something they had to do (like homework) with media use (such as texting with friends), they said the homework was more rewarding, stimulating, or pleasant--but they also reported feeling more negative emotions about the homework, such as finding it more difficult or tiring.

It is not particularly surprising that media multitasking would create both positive and negative emotions, notes study coauthor Zheng Wang, professor in the Department of Communication. "People experience mixed feelings about a lot of things in life. Texting with friends while doing homework may make the homework seem more rewarding, but it may also increase a young person's stress about getting the work done."

The study found that the more positive emotions that the participants felt during multitasking, the less likely they were to multitask during subsequent activities. Negative emotions, though, did not have any effect on later actions. The research involved adolescents aged 11 to 17 living in the Midwest. All participants reported their activities, both media-related and nonmedia-related, three times a day for 14 days on a digital tablet device. At each time point, they listed a main activity they were doing (such as homework or chores), and whether they were doing any media multitasking (such as texting or playing video games) at the same time. For each main activity, they rated to what extent they felt seven emotional responses (three positive and four negative).

Results showed that the teens in the study were media multitasking about 40% of the time that they were doing other activities. Both positive and negative emotions initially increased when...