On any given day, Lindsay, a 24-year-old office worker in New York, can be found with several windows open in her Web browser. When she is not sending e-mails or browsing MySpace, she is chatting with her friends or co-workers through AIM sometimes with multiple conversations going at once.
The New York Times is her homepage, giving her the latest news every morning and recently she downloaded Firefox where she checks the RSS feed for the latest headlines.
This is how Lindsay stays connected to the world. But at times the overflow of information can cause distractions. In an age of instant communication people are accustomed to getting news from multiple sources quickly and constantly, but with so many means of information on her plate, it’s easy for Lindsay to just click away, another case of Internet Multitasking Syndrome.
“I think for the most part I’m accustomed to reading the news online as opposed to hardcopy and people like me are the type of person that will be persuaded to click somewhere else,” said Lindsay.
Although Internet Multitasking Syndrome is not a known medical disorder (I just made it up five minutes ago), it is not uncommon for people to become so immersed in their online activities that their cognitive abilities wane. After hours starring at a screen, flipping between web pages and information outlets, people can develop a feeling of anxiety, stress and a decrease in mental performance, said John Suler, author of The Psychology of Cyberspace. “There are limits to how much
information one person can process,” he continued.
These are symptoms akin to sensory overload, and while it is rare for a
person to become so addicted to the Internet that it damages their
relationship to friends, family, or performance at work, Suler said
that the juggling act which we perform online can effect the way we
read the news. “You are getting a cursory understanding of several
different sources of information at one time, it’s a delicate balance
do you want to get a shallow understanding of lots of different things
or a deep grasp of one topic,” asked Suler.
Online, most people opt for the quick glance. The average Internet attention span is roughly 10 seconds according to some statistics, allowing humans to just barely beat out gold fish in terms of staying on topic. One major cause of this decrease in attention are hyperlinks, which are built into Web pages allowing people to jump from one digital
location to the next.
Blue highlighted words inserted in our text have become commonplace on the Internet, but no one has made an attempt to study what effect it has on our digital culture, said Joseph Turow, a professor at Penn’s Annenberg School for Communications.
“We haven’t really taken the time to ask what it means when we have an approach to the world where we think of connections in this way. What are the hidden assumptions that places like Google, Yahoo and MSM create for you, to see the world one way or another,” said Turow.
Knowing that readers have such a short attention span and that they can click away at any moment, journalists have to approach writing for the Web in a different manner.
“When you write for the Web you don’t beat around the bush, you get to the point quickly, because you don’t have the luxury of putting the reader in the mood or creating the intellectual framework for your argument,” said Jack Shafer, author of Press Box a column at Slate Magazine.
But writing for the Web doesn’t just mimic the wire stories of old. While the speed at which information comes across is similar, the nature of the information is somewhat different. Shafer uses links only as a referencing tool — a way to site primary sources that back his arguments — but often bloggers and even journalists use it as a means to highlight conversations that share their political sentiments.
In these circles people are called “ditto-heads,” groups of writers and readers that only link and read views that echo their own beliefs. While this might make for a “good” read and can even capture a readers attention it fails to address one of journalism main components: to create a healthy civic discussion.
It leads to wonder if the Internet is a good place to get the news at all. But many journalists see a great potential for online news to inform readers on important issues in their lives. Saul Hansell, a writer for the New York Times, said that newspapers have always known people don’t read to the end of a story. With news online this becomes apparent, but it at least provides a breadth of material that is easy to access.
Readers always have something in their peripheral vision and while the Internet allows them to investigate these issues on a shallow level, it also gives them the tools to focus intimately on other matters, said Hansell. “I would take any of these problems over having too little information or information that is to hard to get at.”
Lindsay prefers to get her news online. But as she sifts between news feeds, social networking sites, gossip blogs and chats, the lines between reading the news and just plain reading are blurred and one has to wonder if the news suffers.
Great article — could help but write one to highlight it!
I spent way too much time everday reading digg, blogs and other tech news now days it’s hard to get any serious work done.
Do you suffer from this?
And then there are net zombies like me who have to WORK to get through an article this long (no, it’s not too long, it’s me). I always called it “internet ADD.” 😉
I have no idea how some people manage to blog and surf seemingly nonstop when they have JOBS. At least I can say I have time to be a slacker!
nice article, and I am the same way and completely agree. A similiar example to this is this comment page, right now you have 3 comments. However on Digg.com this story is currently on the front page with 377 “diggs” and 63 comments…It looks like the guy above me came from digg so I can assume that only 2 in 63 felt to comment on digg than on your actual page…weird.
Digg Link:
http://www.digg.com/health/Internet_Multitasking_Disorder
First of all, what is that ergonomics graphic doing in this article? This is supposed to be about mental states affected by the actions people take while using the web, not the environment they live in. It’s also outdated. An upright MRI scanner has shown that less pressure is exerted on the lower back when reclining to a 135 degree angle than when sitting at a 90 degree angle. http://www.gateway.ualberta.ca/view.php?aid=7311
Now, looking at this article’s real subject, according to it, no one will even bother to read the comments, except perhaps the person maintaining this site. But that’s okay, because so few people who found this article read the whole thing. Even fewer will be willing to comment. Part of it is the time spent to do so, but another part is the need to say something. But that’s an aspect of culture, not how people use software to (dis)organize their lives.
If you do read this comment, you now have the choice of continuing to read any further comments, or you can investigate the hyperlink I just created. You could also save it for later, but should you check it out, you now have extra information which would have been less than easy to reproduce here. This is where I agree with Hansell: hyperlinks help others to make larger searches for information. The problem is whether or not the information is actually true, how you can or cannot verify it, and if the reader even tries to. In short, people are given more choices, that makes things more complex, and more complexity creates more problems for a reader who doesn’t know how to best use the tools they have access to. Poor decisions in judging the truth in the info can lead to a more misinformed, addle-brained public. But its still preferable to have the chance to find the truth than to not.
Very interesting article.
Do you think that because of the short attention span and the reluctance of Internet surfers to read through the “full” article, it would be easier to disseminate propaganda and false information? I guess trustworthiness of the source plays a role here but I can help but think that rumors will spread a lot more quickly now and conversely would take a lot longer to research and prove.
Very interesting. I am always wondering this myself. I read a lot on various different topics online throughout the day. If try to remember what I read that day I can only remember a small percentage of what I have read, however, if someone says something that triggers my memory I can remember detailed accounts of online articles I have read months before.
You just made this up 10 minutes ago? Is there any scientific basis at all for this article?
Whilst made up you do raise some good points 🙂
I have been talking with people about how I use my virtual peripheral vision ( I wrote about it on first post on eightbar.com)
Many people are fell they need to complete and read everything in detail. When there is so much you learn to skim but absorb the sentiment.
I have a spare screen when I am at a desk. It is my feed reader. I refreshes, and headlines go past, abstracts. Flavours of information indicating ambient trends. (Yes veyr matrix)
I find that the patterns, and multiple levels of abstraction let me operate in a continuous flow.
We are also finding that the new metaverse interactions are adding to our human experience, not overloading them. Providing more human and space related visual cues to aid in internalizing the essence of a meeting or conversation for recal later.
I also dont know whether to agree with the “ditto head” comment or not 🙂
Hi Everyone!
no, I didn’t really just make it up 10 minutes ago (I did research to get the quotes and talk to the sources in the article). It’s not a real medical disorder either — but the quotes are all real, as are the statistics that the average human attention span shrinks drastically online.
As for the ergonomics chart — Yea, I know it’s old and only tangentially related. But it was free and on the Internet and I like it. So deal.
I’m not saying that the increase in available information is is bad — that would be silly.
What I am proposing is the notion that with so many options at any given time, people tend to get distracted so regularly that their ability to be effective decreases. Someone with IMS is incredibly productive (always doing things) but is spread out so thin online that they aren’t effective. For example….. err… hold on, someone is IMing me.
Interesting – completely independently, I wrote on a similar topic this morning.
http://andypiper.wordpress.com/2007/01/24/the-quicksand-of-web-20/
I only read half of this article, and I liked what was reading. I totally have the syndrome.
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