FriSem

Rinseo Park, a PhD candidate in the Communication Department and is working with Nilam Ram in The Change Lab.

Title: Multitasking in the WildAbstract: Life is on the screen. 

Smartphones integrate multiple aspects of life – entertainment, work, and social relationships – supporting behaviors that range from habitual actions like phone-checking or binge-watching to cognitively demanding tasks such as writing reports or managing calendars. People often engage in a variety of activities simultaneously (e.g., listening to music while texting) or in sequence (e.g., switching from reading news to online shopping), a phenomenon referred to as media multitasking. What motivates these fast-changing, dynamic behaviors on the screen? How can we understand and facilitate the psychological processes that emerge as people navigate their digital environments? And how should we study this phenomenon differently than we study traditional multitasking? Building on data from the Human Screenome Project, I will explore how smartphone multitasking unfolds in everyday life.