Work

A data-capture study finds that from ages 15 and 48, women tend to watch TV while surfing the net at the same time nearly twice as much as men. The data, released by Integrated Media Measurement Inc., also finds that while men’s use of both major screen media tends to drop off toward age 40, women’s ramps up, possibly due to the time constraints of children. The study leaves a lot of questions lingering, of course, like what kind of “internet use” is being done. Whether surfing channels while surfing the web is benign background tasking or destructive switchtasking depends on the person, and the data being handled. It is intriguing, though, to look down the road and wonder whether multitasking will remain a young person’s game, or become a fact of grown-up life.