Multitasking - a threat to youth's mental

You are doing homework and you hear a *ting* from your phone, oh that’s a message from your friend. You immediately grab your phone and reply to him/her, suddenly, GrabFood app announce a new discount that available only in this afternoon, then you “jump” to the app and decide what to eat for the dinner, but you realize homework is not finish yet, and you turn back to complete it.

Do you feel yourself in this story? Simutaneously doing many tasks and hope you will done all of them just in a moment.

That is an behavior that nowadays young people keep carry on. It is not about doing homework or ordering food from app, what I am trying to say is that they keep on multitasking. This is an extremely harmful behavior for our brain and I need to show you why.

Explanation

In concise, the term multitasking indicate the ability to carry on many tasks at a time and swtiching between tasks.

The secret of why we’re multitasking

As technology keeps developing, we have more chances to get access to different digital devices. We believe that we can also multitasking like those devices, but that is wrong. Computer also finds difficult when multitasking. When you open too many tabs, your computer will slow down for sure. Therefore, how would normal people like us can manage that much tasks at a time?

How harmful it is?

· Wasting energy: every time we switching task, our brain have to reset and process the new task, this wasting lots of our energy which cause stress and burn-out in a long time.

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Figure 1. Your brain when multitasking (Axon Active)

· Reduce IQ: multitasking can cause “informania” which is a state of overwhelmed with information, it is twice as harmful as marijuana on brain and can reduce our IQ to 10 points.

· Brain damage: There is a research on multitasking in UK, they found that multi-taskers have less density in prefrontal cortex, which reduce the ability to control emotion and leading to emotional disturbance.

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Figure 3. Prefrontal cortex and its function (Fast company)

The cure for multitasking

· “20 minutes rule”: Divide work into small tasks, focusing on each task for 20 minutes, instead of keep switching back and forth

· Mindfulness and also meditation: Being aware of what you are doing so that you would not overwhelmed by different factors, this need practice, but it really work!

Conclusion

As long as we exposure to more digital devices and working in higher academic environment, the higher ability “multitasking” will squash our mental. So KEEP AN EYE ON IT! Life is not easy, sometimes you get swept away with the workflow and not knowing what’s going on, it’s okay, seek our for help immediately if you feel overwhelmed and practice on mindfulness to ease your soul.

Hope we will all be happy!