Social Media and Actual Change in Humans

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There is an enormous amount of discussion around academia and the Internet about how and/or if social media is changing the way people think and perceive the world around them. Tac Anderson's post today on his blog New Comm Biz discusses some of the current thinking on the topic, as well as posits that social media is a bit easier to work with if you have (or tend toward) ADD, but if you are more of a Low Media Multitasker, and experience greater costs in context switching between content streams, you may have trouble.

I have been doing some research about multitasking and the studies seem mixed. So much has to do with an individual's working memory capacity, not to mention the somewhat fuzzy definition of multitasking (do you mean the ability to prioritize the work and projects on your plate or do you mean actually doing two or more things exactly at the same time?). For an additional study to weigh in, read this study by Eyal Ophir, Clifford Nass and Anthony D. Wagner entitled Cognitive control in media multitaskers and do some searching yourself, as well as post what your experiences have been multitasking. Draw your own conclusions, add to the conversation....perhaps at the same time!

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