From the Nieman Journalism Lab:
“Multitasking on a Single Device: Arousal and the Frequency, Anticipation, and Prediction of Switching Between Media Content on a Computer”: From Stanford University, published in Journal of Communication. By Leo Yeykelis, James J. Cummings, and Byron Reeves.
The study looks at multitasking from a slightly different angle than many prior studies do — namely, the toggling between content on just one device (as opposed to multiple device usage). The researchers experimented on 12 undergraduates using their personal laptop in a natural setting, generating “396,000 data points equaling 110 hours of moment-by-moment changes in switching and arousal over 10 hours during a normal weekday.” Arousal was measured by “skin conductance levels” determined through wrist censors, which measure activation levels through the sympathetic nervous system.
Yeykelis, Cummings, and Reeves determine that, on average, subjects switched content every 19 seconds — faster than expected based on prior literature. In fact, “One-fifth of all content was viewed for 5 seconds or less, with 75 percent viewed for less than a minute.” Email and Facebook took up a quarter of all subjects’ time online. Further, they “discovered that people have an anticipatory arousal spike 12 seconds before switching to [other] content.”....
