Tonight, as the American public focuses full attention on election results, large portions of the population will be tracking results simultaneously across the major TV news channels and online—searching for the newest result, the most interesting factoid. But, on the average weeknight, or during Monday Night Football, how many people give their full attention to the tube and how many are switching their attention back and forth between the TV and their laptop or iPhone?
Apparently, multi-tasking is far more common—and getting more so—than you might guess.

In 2008, two-thirds of broadband users (66%) are saying they "regularly" or "occasionally" go online while watching TV—a 2 percentage point increase from 2007.

Among those who do merge their TV viewing with online activities, nearly two-thirds claim that they go online to get work / tasks done. Filling in the time during commercial breaks is another common—if short-duration—reason for turning attention away from the TV (38%). (See 2007 data here.) Normal 0 false false false EN-US ZH-CN X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4

However, there are a couple of interesting age-related differences here:

The older you are, the more likely you are to sit through commercials!  Six in ten teenagers resort to the PC as a time filler, compared to 28% of those 50+.

Two-thirds of those 13-49 say they go online to get work done. In contrast, 57% of multi-taskers over 50 cite this as a reason.

I looked into these age differences after hearing part of Jon Hamilton’s story on NPR about the effect of age on multi-tasking capabilities, which pointed to a study by Cindy Lustig. The study finds that multi-tasking peaks in the 20s or 30s—the amount of "internal chatter" that blurs our focus gradually increases after that. So, to the teenagers out there—splitting your attention between TV and homework is probably best saved till you’re older.
Of course, the question is to what extent exactly do different age groups comprehend  and retain the content they’ve “juggled”? Luckily, contrary to cell phone use while driving, the PC-TV case of multi-tasking is safe and often more productive.