Multitasking or continuous partial attention: A critical bottleneck for digital natives

Abstract

With the beginning of the second half of the past century, advances in Information and Communication Technologies had unprecedented influence deeply felt in all social structures. The effects were so much widespread that the differences in technology use have created a huge gap between generations in terms of everyday life and lifestyle. As a result, two groups occurred; those growing with technology digital natives and digital immigrants who try to keep pace with technology. Today, the computer, internet and mobile technologies like e-book readers, mobile phones, android devices, smart phones and tablet computers have become all-day business and communication tools used by digital natives. However, these high-tech tools, with their speed and ease of use, revealed some important issues that deeply affect digital natives' way of life. Among these most important effects are Continuous Partial Attention and Multitasking. In this study, these two conditions faced by digital natives were compared, and some suggestions have been put forward for the digital native learners.