Media Multitasking: A Bibliometric Approach and Literature Review

Abstract

Media multitasking became increasingly popular over the past decade. As this behavior is intensely taxing cognitive resources, it has raised interest and concerns among academics in a variety of fields. Consequently, in recent years, research on how, when, and why people media multitask has strongly emerged, and the consequences of the behavior for a great variety of outcomes (such as working memory, task performance, or socioemotional outcomes) have been explored. While efforts are made to summarize the findings of media multitasking research until date, these meta, and literature studies focused on specific research subdomains. Therefore, the current study adopted a quantitative method to map all studies in the broad field of media multitasking research. The bibliometric and thematic content analyses helped us identifying five major research topics and trends in the overall media multitasking domain. While media multitasking research started by studying its prevalence, appearance, and predictors, early research within the domain was also interested in the impact of this media consumption behavior on individuals' cognitive control and academic performance. Later on in 2007, scholars investigated the implications of media multitasking on the processing of media- and persuasive content, while its impact on socioemotional well-being received attention ever since 2009. Our analyses indicate that research within the field of media multitasking knows a dominant focus on adolescents, television watching, and cognitive depletion. Based on these findings, the paper concludes by discussing directions for future research.

Media-multitasking and cognitive control across the lifespan

“…Interestingly, in our data the sign of the relationship between multitasking costs and multi-media use also changes with age from positive in young participants to negative in older participants, suggesting that the demographic composition of participant groups may have significantly influenced the pattern of results observed in previous studies. Indeed, in a recent review, Beuckels et al 24 highlight that older adults are extensive media-multitaskers and note that this group have received little to no research attention, thus the present work addresses an important gap in the literature.…”

“…Thus, it remains unknown whether such changes across the life-span are influenced—for better or worse—by multimedia technology use. Indeed, in a recent review, Beuckels et al 24 identified that there is an important research gap in the field of media multitasking, in which younger and older media multitaskers have received little to no research attention. Thus, our research addresses an important outstanding issue in the field.…”

Media Multitasking, Perception of Media Use for Families, and Obstacles of Its Use

“…Along with the inclusion of the 4.0 revolution agenda and the era of disruption in these various fields, multitasking media behavior is increasingly rampant (Lang et al, 2015) mentions that multitasking media is defined as the state in which a person performs two tasks simultaneously, one involving media use. According to Beuckels et al (2021) media multitasking is when a person performs two or more tasks using media simultaneously, either using media on one or more of the tasks. Therefore, the behavior of multitasking media is a person's activity in using more than one technological media simultaneously.…”

Bibliometric Analysis of Dual-Task Studies Published in Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation

“…Therefore, well-structured bibliometric studies can form a sound basis to develop an area in unique and significant ways and guide the researchers for future studies (18). There are a few bibliometric analyses on multitasking in psychology (20,21). However, there is no bibliometric analysis of dual-task studies the popularity of which is gradually increasing in physiotherapy and rehabilitation today.…”