When inhaling media erodes attention, exhaling provides focus

A student listens to media through earbuds while working on a laptop. New research shows heavy media multitaskers benefited from a short meditation exercise in which they sat quietly counting their breaths. Photo: Jeff Miller People who often mix their media consumption - texting while watching TV, or listening to music while reading - are not known for being able to hold their attention on one task. But sharpening their focus may be as simple as breathing. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have shown that heavy media multitaskers benefited from a short meditation exercise in which they sat quietly counting their breaths. "In general, people perform better after this mindfulness task," says Thomas Gorman , first author of the study, which was published April 18 by the journal Scientific Reports. "But we found a significant difference for heavy media multitaskers.