“When the TV goes on, the cellphones come out. According to a new joint survey of U.S. mobile phone users by Razorfish and Yahoo, 80% of respondents say they regularly use their cellphones while watching TV, with 70% of those mutlitaskers doing the two-screen tango at least once a week and a staggering 49% second-screening every day.” — Online Media Daily
It came to me while watching “Dancing With the Stars” as I read the Tibetan Book of the Dead and trimmed my nails: Now was the time to order the new splatter cover for my iPad, handy for watching recipes in the latest e-cookbooks!
“Are you listening to me?” my daughter asked, apparently not for the first time.
OK, so maybe my multitasking was getting out of hand.
Was it possible that downloading the latest Mac Miller tune while doing holiday shopping and quizzing my daughter on her French verbs was a cover for some neurotic tic that runs much deeper? Mac, I hear through Facebook, is the son of an old pal.
My attention deficit disorder is finally proving useful. At last, it’s considered normal to be scattered. Nancy Grace just explained why she’s so grateful for her ballroom opportunity. Where did I hear that? She figures prominently in either “DWTS” or the Tibetan route to pure enlightenment — can’t remember which — now apparently available in six colors.
It occurred to me, like that daily yoga reminder that pops up unbidden on my laptop (“dismiss”!): Multitasking is the new ADD, a point of pride. My mental filing system was so cluttered, I couldn’t summon the information I’d just absorbed, but that made me just like everyone else.
What did Bruno say?
The last time I sat alone quietly was sometime pre-Internet, pre-CNN, maybe before cellphones. The Mouseketeers had just finished a rousing tribute to the weekly “Anything Can Happen Day” and I was left in my highchair to contemplate my mortality.
Now, that was a scary moment. Thankfully, nothing’s been quiet since.
Remember when it was odd to walk down the street, make eye contact with someone and hear them talking out loud? Now, we anticipate that people are wearing earpieces. The talkers-out-loud and the noisy schizophrenics are increasingly difficult to tell apart. Normalizing for them, too!
These days, it’s difficult to remember a time when watching TV didn’t require thumbs.
My yoga teacher likes to talk about focus and quiet and stillness. I get so busy trying to distinguish focus from quiet and stillness that I can’t breathe. Which one’s more important? Focus or stillness? Or breathing? I’d give breathing a 9. Of course, I put down the Blackberry during class. But the yoga “on demand” on cable at home lets me pause to take a call.
Nobody calls during my favorite prime-time shows anymore, because they’re all online, too, discussing shows in the moment. If you can’t remember which show a supporting actor was in 20 years ago, there’s someone tweeting, texting, blogging, bleating in real time, checking IMDB and posting clips to jog your personal database. No need to retrieve memory ourselves.
Like Wii, but played sitting down, television has never been a more active sport.
Joanne Ostrow: 303-954-1830 or jostrow@denverpost.com
“Multitasking adversely affects how you learn,” according to Russell Poldrack, UCLA associate professor of psychology. “Even if you learn while multitasking, that learning is less flexible and more specialized, so you cannot retrieve the information as easily.” — Science Daily
