At this moment I am a typical Gen-Xer. I am sitting in a coffee shop, typing away at my laptop computer, checking e-mails and listening to iTunes from with my earpieces. I'm trying to concentrate on crafting a column, but I inevitably get distracted by people ordering the latte of the week or by a new e-mail. I have difficulty sitting still for any length of time or turning my attention to one task.
My children are learning by example. Four-year-old David logs on to his favorite Web sites, where he can color with the click of a mouse, periodically glancing at the cartoons on the TV in back of him. Two-year-old Katherine grabs her pretend cell-phone from her plastic pink purse and paces the kitchen with the phone glued to her ear chatting away to make-believe friends.
Generation M, children ages 8 to 18, are even worse. They are instant messaging, playing games online, doing homework, watching TV, and listening to iTunes all at once. They have grown so used to distraction that required silence is uncomfortable.
Recently, Time magazine featured a study of modern family life led by anthropologist Elinor Ochs, director of UCLA's Center on Everyday Lives of Families. She found the impact of electronic multitasking is one of the most dramatic areas of change in family life.
The observers of the Ochs study looked at what happens at the end of the day. "We saw that when the working parent comes through the door, the other spouse and the kids are so absorbed by what they're doing that they don't give the arriving parent the time of day.... We saw how difficult it was for parents to penetrate the child's universe," says Ochs.
On the one hand, younger people today are so techno-savvy that they are equipped at finding and manipulating all kinds of information. Their ability to research and find answers online, and the breath of their knowledge are impressive. Steve Johnson, author of "Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter," argues that all of it --- e-mail, IM, Google, MySpace, iTunes, games and other digital gadgets --- are sharpening the minds of today's youth.
But there are others, like David Meyer, director of the Brain, Cognition and Action Laboratory at the University of Michigan, who fear that habitual multitasking is bad news because people lose the skill to maintain concentration.
It's not that blogging or IMing or e-mailing are bad in and of themselves. In today's hectic pace, everyone is required to multitask some of the time. We can learn from the younger generation's skill and aptitude with new technology.
Ultimately, though, there comes a time when we should unplug and actually talk to each other old-fashion style, face to face, uninterrupted by e-mail or cell-phones or iPods. Because without real human interaction, technology isn't worth much. Therese J. Borchard is a columnist with Catholic News Service.
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