Study: Multitasking hinders youth social skills - CNN.com - 7 views
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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.
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Ines Simon on 30 Jan 12"Heavy multitaskers experience cognitive issues, such as difficulty focusing and remembering things."
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(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.
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Employees of Silicon Valley giants like Google, Apple, Yahoo and Hewlett-Packard opt to send their children to computer-free Waldorf schools. These subscribe to a teaching philosophy focused on physical activity and learning through creative, hands-on tasks. They affirm that computers inhibit creative thinking, movement, human interaction and attention spans. Computers are not allowed in classrooms and "their use at home" is frowned upon. "Teaching is a human experience," says an associate professor of education at Furman University, "Technology is a distraction when we need literacy, numeracy and critical thinking." "And where advocates for stocking classrooms with technology say children need computer time to compete in the modern world, Waldorf parents counter: what's the rush, given how easy it is to pick up those skills?" http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/technology/at-waldorf-school-in-silicon-valley-technology-can-wait.html?_r=4&pagewanted=all -
It's true that computers can give a person bad habits, I do not doubt that. But the article is not offering any numbers nor web page reference of any kind; so we cannot verify this easily. However, my point is that perhaps computers have not made anyone more antisocial, than what they would have been without computers. The articles says that "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", but what is "normal social tendencies"? There will be some of these young girls without "normal social tendencies", but I doubt that the difference between these young girls, and the ones who does not multitask - is about the same amount of girls without these normal tendencies. Not all mice are gray, some are brown. Not all users of IT are antisocial, some who aren't will be antisocial as well.
