The Multitasking Generation

I just finished reading the cover story from last week's issue of Time. It was all about the incredible amount of multitasking in which young people are so often engaged. The article went well beyond facts and fluff and actually delved into the science and psychology behind the issue. As one would suspect, multitasking is not effective, and there's plenty of evidence to back this up.

I found this statement particularly interesting:

Every generation of adults sees new technology--and the social changes it stirs--as a threat to the rightful order of things: Plato warned (correctly) that reading would be the downfall of oral tradition and memory. And every generation of teenagers embraces the freedoms and possibilities wrought by technology in ways that shock the elders: just think about what the automobile did for dating.

It's pretty hysterical that reading was controversial at one time for similar reasons that electronic media are chastised today.