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Essay On Media Multitasking

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Over the last decade or so, improvements in technology and multimedia have had a substantial effect on the ways people choose to communicate and the way people spend their spare time. Social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr have become a normal part of everyday life. We are now living in a world where if an individual does not have accounts in at least 2 of the aforementioned social media sites, they are an oddity, well, at least for most of the Western world. Social media has benefitted this generation in many ways. Globalisation has occurred as a result of these sites, making the world more interconnected, and often serving as a tool to help raise awareness of the events that happen around the world that are …show more content…
It is known that media multitasking otherwise known as a concurrent consumption of multiple media forms, has been associated with negative social wellbeing, decreased cognitive control abilities, and poor academic performance amongst other issues. However, not a lot is known about the neural processes associated with media multitasking. Loh and Kanai investigated the relationships between media multitasking and the structure of the brain. They’re research demonstrated that brain structure can be altered if exposed to prolonged media use; individuals who scored higher on the Media Multitasking Index (MMI), a test produced to provide a stable measure of an individual’s trait media multi-tasking activity. Loh and Kanai’s findings suggest a possible positive correlation between the amount of media usage and an observed decrease in cognitive control, performance, and socio-emotional regulation. Although the cross-sectional nature of this study does not allow one to produce a specific direction of causality, it has done well to bring to light the associations between media multitasking behaviours and differences in brain

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