The present article focuses on the issue of ignoring conversational partners in favor of one's phone, or what has also become known as phubbing. Prior research has shown that this behavior is associated with a host of negative interpersonal effects. Since phubbing by definition entails adverse effects, however, it is interesting to explore why people continue to engage in this hurtful behavior: Are they unaware that phubbing is hurtful to others? Or do they simply not care? Building on interviews with students in a Danish business college, the article reveals a pronounced discrepancy in young people's relationship to phubbing: While they emphatically denounce phubbing as both annoying and disrespectful, they readily admit to phubbing others. In other words, they often act against their own moral convictions. Importantly, participants describe this discrepancy as the result of an unintentional inclination to divert attentional engagement. On the basis of these results, the article develops the notion of digital akrasia, which can be defined as a tendency to become swept up by ones digital devices in spite of better intentions. It is proposed that this phenomenon may be the result of bad technohabits. Further implications are discussed.
In time, phenomenology has become a viable approach to conducting qualitative studies in education. Popular and well-established methods include descriptive and hermeneutic phenomenology. Based on critiques of the essentialism and receptivity of these two methods, however, this article offers a third variation of empirical phenomenology: Postphenomenology. The article introduces postphenomenology, a philosophy of technology that highlights the importance of technological mediation of experience: Technologies transform our perceptions (amplify/reduce) and translate our actions (invite/inhibit). Based on this framework, two approaches to empirical fieldwork are suggested: In-depth exploration of the typical use of a given technology and critical comparison of multiple versions of a technology. It is argued that using postphenomenology as a research method helps researchers explore technological mediation, a vital and oft-neglected aspect of educational practice, but the method simultaneously entails epistemological commitments such as multistability, reflexivity, and posthumanism. The article concludes by discussing future challenges for the postphenomenological method.
The word "multitasking" gets thrown around a lot these days. For years it was touted as the cognitive default for a new generation of digital natives, but psychologists are increasingly warning us against its harmful effects on many different forms of human activity. What exactly is meant by the concept of multitasking, however, remains peculiarly taken-for-granted. The purpose of this article is therefore to analyze, evaluate, and interpret how the word "multitasking" is currently being used in scientific practice. Taking departure in the domain of media multitasking research, the article reveals an unacknowledged normativity in the empirical research literature: Multitasking does not in fact denote a quantitative enumeration of tasks, but a qualitative distinction between on-and off-task activity. In other words, multitasking is functionally equivalent to distraction. This article discusses how this insight challenges the scientific rationality of current media multitasking research and concludes with implications for future research.
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