Multitasking Negatively Affects Learning

Sally Roy of Visual Academy reached out to me after reading my post on unitasking vs. multitasking.

Visual Academy is Online Schools' novel attempt at furthering education and creating a hunger for more knowledge through the use of visual learning techniques.

Sally Roy has done detailed research on the effects of social media (texting and Facebooking, in particular) on online learning of students. She has condensed her findings in an informational graphic. (Please see the image below.)

Roy's research shows that in the general populace, only two percent of the people can effectively multitask. The rest of the people simply perform poorly on all the tasks they're attempting to cycle amongst. Using social media in the midst of homework, studying, and attending online lectures affects short-term memory recall and long-term memory retention. This naturally translates into drops in GPA.

Thus, it clearly shows that unitasking is the way to go; multitasking is just another way of procrastinating.

Roy's mantra, which I support wholeheartedly, is: Want to accomplish more? Do less.


[Online Learning and Multitasking image copyrighted by onlineschools.org and used with permission.]