Not only do smartphones provide unprecedented access to information, they provide unprecedented opportunities to multitask. Forty-eight states have banned texting while driving. But legislation won’t proscribe all situations in which multitasking is unwise; you need to self-regulate. Understanding how the brain multitasks and why we find multitasking so appealing will help you gauge the hazard of pulling out your phone. Multitasking feels like doing two things simultaneously, so it seems the danger lies in asking one mental process to do two incompatible things — for texting drivers, watching the screen and the road.

Source: New York Times July 14, 2019 22:52 UTC