Thursday, February 18, 2010
The Multi-taskers
The first thing I did when I woke up this morning was check my facebook. Everytime I come home from anywhere during the day, I don't sit down on the couch and relax, or call my mom, but like a mandatory routine, I go straight to the computer. I'm sure 90% of Catholic students would say the same. Whether people like to admit it or not, seeing that little red flag in the corner of your page that means you have a new notification, is one of the highlights of their day. In class, we watched a documentary about the gamers in China and Korea who "suffer" from an internet addiction. They're even sent to Internet rehab, to detox, and they developed heath problems due to their excessive Internet usage. It seems sad and pitiful; why not just take the computers away from these kids? Only allow them a certain amount of hours per day? How can you be addicted to something so rediculous? But are we really ones to talk? We may not spend 10 hours a day behind a computer, but we are constantly connected. We check our emails on the treadmill, we download music while we do our homework, we can't even tear ourselves away from facebook for 50 minutes during class. We may not go to the extremes of gaming for hours a day, and it might be easy for us to scold the parents of these kids for allowing them so much access to the computer, but personally if somebody was to take my blackberry or computer away for a day, I wouldn't know what to do with myself. Are we just as addicted to technology as these kids are in Asia? In the documentary, college kids boasted of their ability to multi-task. In class, we looked at the benefits of this new multi-tasking generation. Tapscott said we are more interactive with our education, and we learn faster. But the documentary prooved that we may not be as adept at multi-tasking as we'd like to thing. How much easier would it be to pay attention in class without the lure of facebook on our computers, or even sit down and do homework for one hour without going on the internet. If we put down our phones and computers, without "multi-tasking" we might be able to get alot more done than we think.
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I feel like our definition of being addicted to the Internet has a different meaning than those in Asia who are on the computers constantly. But at the same time, we are facing the same challenges. Just like you, if I didn't have my computer or iPhone for the whole day, I would probably be really lost. It's sad to admit it, but it is true. I also think that our inability to part with our technology fuels our need to be able to multitask. And, perhaps due to this fact we are not able to fully multitask properly and this therefore negatively influences all aspects of our lives.
ReplyDeleteVery true, the kids in Asia have completely different priorities with their technologies, which I failed to point out. Also, that is a good point about multi-tasking, its almost like a vicious cycle that is consuming us. Hopefully we can one day learn how to separate ourselves from technologies.
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