“Multitasker” is a buzz word you may find on many resumes but according to researchers at Stanford University it may not necessarily be a positive trait when it comes to juggling your Blackberry, iPhone, Twitter and Facebook pages.  Referred to as “media multitasking,” a Stanford University study found that those who do it don’t pay attention, control their memory or switch from one job to another as well as those who prefer to complete one task at a time.

“People are multi-tasking with media far more than they ever have in the past. And that’s not traditionally something that we ever thought the brain was really built for,” says Eyal Ophir, one of the authors of the 2009 study.  Ophir and others compared the cognitive control of a group of “heavy media multitaskers” to “light media multitaskers” and found that the heavy tech jugglers had a harder time filtering out irrelevant information.  “They’re spreading their attention very broadly and somewhat thinly,” Ophir says,  “and in a way they’re more responsive to their environment. So they’re letting the information control what they pay attention to rather than they being in control.”  And the most surprising finding for Ophir?  “We saw that they had more trouble switching back and forth between tasks specifically because when they were doing one task, they couldn’t help thinking about the task that they weren’t doing. So everything was getting a little bit jumbled together.”  Ophir speculates that our brains are probably being rewired in some way.

Beth Feldman is the founder of www.RoleMommy.com, a blogger, a mother of two and a lifelong multitasker.  “You know it’s like the Olympics for me,” she says, ” how many balls can I have in the air and still get it done …I will always be a multitasker.”  Feldman Tweets, Skypes, updates her Facebook, texts on her Blackberry and takes photos with her iPhone.  Often she does several of these at the same time.  “If I’m writing there will be times when I will check my email or check my facebook or check my twitter while I’m writing something and I think that, I think to myself, you know it would be really great to just not have access to the internet so I could just focus on the writing part,” she reports. 

While the distractions may slow her down at times, Feldman refers to the technology as both a blessing and a curse.  She points to a recent example of when an out of town meeting conflicted with her daughter’s oral surgery.  “I actually Skyped in and was there the two hours and was there to hold my daughters hand, so for me it’s a blessing. Um, the curse part is the emails that come in from a client on a Sunday when I’m in the middle of a ballgame with my kids… It’s hard for me not to answer back, and I think that people don’t really have boundaries anymore and that’s, that’s the downfall.”  To deal with the curse part of it all, Feldman is working to cut back on her constant media multitasking and to focus on one thing at a time.  “The minute that your child takes your phone and puts it in the refrigerator or, or consciously says ‘mom focus on me and not on your computer’ it’s a wakeup call and I think I’ve had that and I’m trying my best,” Feldman says.

And as for those people distracted by incoming information, “I don’t necessarily think this is a good or a bad thing,” Ophir says, “I think it’s a different orientation. When there’s this much information coming toward you, maybe the way these people have adapted to it is by relinquishing a little bit of control and allowing the information itself, the notifications, the little pings, the little alerts to tell them what’s most important.”