Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Meaghan Sherer
12 February 2015
How Technology Harms Our Productivity 2
“This is the quality that validates us, this is how we become real to ourselves-by
Professor at Yale, believes that our generation is too wrapped up in the thought that
everyone needs to know what is going on in our lives. He believes that this generation
does not see the value of solitude, something his generation grew up with, because we
feel that solitude is the same as loneliness (Deresiewicz 95). The majority of young adults
today are so wrapped up in their phones that they fail to see how it is harming their
productivity.
Teenagers and young adults love their phones. There are so many things to do and
so many possibilities to choose from to check up on what your friends are doing: texting
them and asking them, or going on various social media apps such as Twitter, Snapchat,
Instagram, and Facebook. With these various gateways to see what our friends are doing,
we are always connected with them even if we are not with them. The bad thing about
having the ability to always being connected with everyone is that we end up constantly
checking the various apps; sometimes while doing schoolwork. Doing this harms our
productivity because we interrupt our thought process of the subject we are involved in.
However, some of us try and multitask; constantly switching back and forth between the
projects we are working on and our phones. Dr. Wiemer, who has edited The Teaching
Professor newsletter since 1987 and writes the Teaching Professor Blog, has a strong
opinion of the notion of multitasking. “They think they can do two or three tasks
simultaneously and not compromise the quality of what they produce. Research says that
learning environments is now coming from a variety of studies” (Weimer). The “they”
How Technology Harms Our Productivity 3
she refers to, is college students, so this statement directly pertains to the inability we
have to do school work and be in the loop with everyone else at the same time and do the
two efficiently. One study was conducted where half of the class was allowed to use
phones during a lecture and the other half was not. After the lecture the entire class was
given a quiz on what was just taught. The students who were not allowed to use their
phones scored significantly higher than those who were allowed access to their phones
(qtd. in Weimer). I believe this to be true because I have done this in class where I have
been texting, not paying attention to what is going on, and be completely lost when I
become engaged again in the discussion or caught off guard if the teacher asks me a
question.
and Digital Environments Research Center. Students in a first year writing class were
asked to keep a diary of all the writing they did over the course of a two-week period.
This writing included blogging, texting, gaming; anything and everything. For each entry
that made they had to record the time, genre, audience, location and purpose of the
writing. The study’s lead author, Jeffery Grabill, was surprised of the minimal amount of
the total writing was for schoolwork. After the two week study, Grabill had follow up
interviews with students involved in the study and found that “students often described
their social, out of class writing as more persistent and meaningful to them than their in
class work was” (Keller 159). Josh Keller, the author of the piece this example was
selected from, is a reporter for The Chronicle of Higher Education. His main focuses for
the majority of his articles are on issues of higher education for faculty, administrators
and students. This example, to me, shows that our generation is more concerned with our
How Technology Harms Our Productivity 4
social lives and how we communicate with our friends rather than how we try to excel in
school.
generation of TVs and was “trained to be bored” because consumer society wanted
people to feel bored in order to stimulate the market. He goes on to say that he liked
being in solitude at times because it gave him a chance to be with his thoughts and reflect
upon himself. In today’s age we are so scared to be isolated “from the herd” that we
constantly have the need to be checking updates and checking on what our friends are
doing and what is going on in the world. “Some degree of boredom and loneliness is to
irony of “social” media, due to the fact that we have become so dependent on social
media for keeping us occupied when we have nothing to do, we have become slaves to
somewhere alone such as waiting for food in the Cove. I am just sitting there with no one
to talk to so I go on my phone; because I am bored. This goes along with the thought of it
will not be distracted by our friends talking to us. However, having our phones next to us
while working defeats the purpose because we are not alone if we are constantly checking
Therefore, you can see now that the thought of social media harming us is not just
coming from our parents annoyed with our inconsistent study habits flipping back and
How Technology Harms Our Productivity 5
forth between schoolwork and our phones. There have been studies done to prove that
way, that this generation specifically, has become addicted to the feeling of never
overcome this desire to be connected all the time, we need to sort out our priorities; do
our schoolwork without our phones staring at us from next to our computers and turn off
References
Ellis, Y., Daniels, W. and Jauregui, A. (2010). The effect of multitasking on the grade
<http://www.aabri.com/manuscripts/10498.pdf>.
Keller, Josh. Studies Explore Whether the Internet Makes Students Better Writters. From
Inquiry to Academic Writing. Second ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin, 2008. 159.
Print.