What Was I Doing?

I like to think of myself as skilled at multitasking. I can type incredibly fast and can often fire off an email (or two) while holding a conversation about a completely different topic. I can juggle multiple things (editing a document, updating a webpage, posting to social media) sort of simultaneously. It feels great until I find myself staring at the computer screen with not a single clue as to what I was doing.

We have access to so much technology. We can share things on various social media platforms; we can call, text and e-mail -- all at the same time; there are chatting apps like Skype for business, Slack and Microsoft Teams (I may have all three on my work computer); and then there are services like GoToMeeting and WebEx that allow us to hold virtual meetings with people from around the globe. I will admit that I may be one of those people who participates in a webinar while also doing two or three (or four) other things. But that means I'm probably missing some of what's going on.

While this technology has enabled us to do things more efficiently, whether it's communicating faster or collaborating better with people who are in another location, I feel like it has also forced us to try and do more and do it in less time. That's fine to a certain extent, but when it comes down to it, there's still only 24 hours in a day and 7 days in a week. I find I'm really good at multi-tasking to a point. But when I surpass that point, that's it. I'm left staring at a blank screen forgetting what I was trying to do. And it's not as though I can say, okay I can do three things at once and be fine. It depends on what the things are and what they entail.

Being a social media editor can sometimes feel like you're Alice and you've gone down a rabbit hole in Wonderland. You log on to Facebook to post an event reminder and then you see one of your partner agencies has shared what looks like an interesting article. You start reading it, perhaps you share it with your followers too and give them a h/t. But then you forget to post that event reminder and have this nagging feeling for the next several hours that you were supposed to be doing something.

For Theory and Practice of Social Media we read an article by Jean Twenge that was published in The Atlantic in 2017. Twenge questions whether smartphones have ruined a whole generation. She's concerned about a group she has dubbed the iGeneration (born between 1995 and 2012), who grew up tethered to an array of devices. While she makes a lot of strong points for how smartphones are hindering their ability to interact with people face-to-face and also limiting their independence, I wondered while reading it if she should have taken a closer look at the effect on other generations as well.

Twenge notes that millennials (that technically includes me, though I'm on the cusp and will often argue I don't align myself with that generation), "grew up with the web as well, but it wasn’t ever-present in their lives, at hand at all times, day and night." While that is absolutely true, and I remember what life was like before smartphones, we are tethered to our phones now. While some people may stop working the moment they leave their place of employment, I find myself often checking emails and our social media accounts after hours. And I know I'm not alone. I think many of us feel compelled to check in because we're plugged in. I think it's that constant connection that makes us feel compelled to try and do more. So perhaps smartphones have ruined more than one generation.

Don't get me wrong, smartphones are a great thing, particularly when they provide people who don't own a traditional computer or have internet access a way to search the world wide web of information and access applications that can help them connect with people, employment and services. But I also think that we all have to remember the days before smartphones, when we didn't need to respond to a text or email immediately, and we were blissfully unplugged.

This blog post is an assignment for the Theory and Practice of Social Media course at NJIT.