It seems that teenagers, according to this site, process about 3,400 text messages a month. For a normal 175 hour adult work month (4.3 weeks/month x 5 days a week x 8 hours) that means about 20 text messages an hour.
Think about that - every three minutes on average you are receiving/sending a text message. And while its less for older age groups today it seems obvious that this trend will stick with this age group as they grow.
I know that in the past there have been and still are arguments about TV "shortening our attention spans" but it would seem that this statistic tells the tale - you're going to get interrupted every three minutes.
Then there is the time it takes to process the text message - say at least 30 seconds. This means that you really only have 2.5 minutes of free time between the current text and the next one.
When you have a processing being interrupted on a regular basis like this its called quantization. Quantization means that things related to the process happen in regular "chunks". While you may not realize it everything you do with technology is quantized: TV, video and Flash are all displayed at a frame rate of 30 to 60 frames a second - that is, you are not seeing a smoothly changing video image but rather a sequence of still images that only change a small bit from image to image.
Similarly any digital sound is "sampled" or quantized to 44.1 kHz - that is you don't hear a smooth analog signal like you might on an old AM radio. Instead the sound is sampled 44.1 thousand times per second and turned into bits. The bits are sent to your audio player which reconstructs them back to smooth-sounding audio.
However, quantization of something causes information to be lost.
What I mean by this is that if I am sampling my audio signal very rapidly on average I am going to get sound out of the process which sounds very nice - like I would expect. However, information about the original audio that appears between the samples is lost.
If you have ever used the "single frame" video button on a DVR you will see that while each successive frame changes very litter there are still places where something between frames can and is lost.
So this continuous interruption, or quantization, is happening in our lives. And, more importantly, in the lives of our children. What's lost is the time it takes to get back to where you were mentally after an interruption. So if you are interrupted every 3 minutes and it takes a 30 seconds to answer the text and a full minute to gather your thoughts up to the point you were at before the text that leaves you about 90 seconds in which to accomplish something.
Now, as an adult, particularly when working, I find it important to be able to concentrate on something for long periods. Concentration, while obviously involving mental effort, also takes time.
So suppose your child is working on a simple math word problem: "Frank was hauling a wide load out of Boston. At 8:00 a.m. he headed west from exit #102 at and average speed of 35 mph. Victor headed west from the same exit at 11 a.m. in his Lexus. By 2 p.m. the same day Victor was 15 miles ahead of Frank. What was Victor's average speed?"
So Frank drives 6 hours at 35 mph or 210 miles by 2:00 pm.
Victor is at 225 miles by 2:00 pm, but since he left at 11:00 AM he has only been driving 3 hours.
So Victor drives at 225 mph / 3 hrs or 75 mph.
Not too hard. But if I am being interrupted frequently enough I doubt even I could do this problem.
It takes me about a minute to do this problem, maybe two if I count the time to write down the answer.
But, if I were 13 or 14 years old in 8th grade it would probably take a few more minutes of work - lets be generous and say four minutes.
Now, in my quantized reality that means I will get interrupted at least once during my effort to complete the problem.
A significant part of the time it takes to solve the problem is figuring out what the problem is telling me - and therefore I need to concentrate. And concentration is sequential and linear, i.e., I have to start at the beginning and work through to the end. So I first have to figure out what the "knowns" are in the problem - when did Frank leave, how long did he drive, and so on. I can't solve the problem unless I have that information.
But what if I am interrupted at a rate that interferes with me building up what I need to know... say I get 80% of the way there and the phone pings with a text. I spend 30 seconds or a minute to deal with the text. Can I pick up where I left off in my concentration?
I doubt it...
Maybe I can get back to 20% or 40% of where I was, but probably not 80%.
So this means that what should take me 4 minutes to complete takes two or three times as long. And I probably don't really learn what I need to (not withstanding that I am texting someone else for the answers).
Now imagine that I am doing something important - and the phone is constantly pinging. How is this loss of concentration different than being over tired or drunk? (This is exactly why texting is illegal while driving.)
So given this rate of interruption how can you concentrate, have a life, have a relationship, drive, or concentrate at all?
I think this is an important question.
Further, this sort of quantized existence can be addicting. You literally become so used to the interruptions that you crave them when they are absent.
As adults managing interruptions is a skill. You cannot literally respond every time a text message arrives or you simply thrash - never getting anything done. Sadly this is a skill most adults do not seem to have mastered. (Perhaps they are too busy answering texts to notice the problem.)
If you look at the performance of the US in science and math compared to the rest of the world its lackluster - and this is probably one of the reasons why.
Perhaps this is why much of today's world is not well thought out.
No one literally has the time in the corporate world to sit down, uninterrupted, and reason out a complete chain of events.
And then there are doctors and others performing important tasks related to our well being - do we really want them interrupted all the time?
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