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Many consumers worldwide worry that technology is overtaking their lives, finds Euro RSCG Worldwidein an April 2012 report. Dividing the more than 7,000 respondents from 19 countries up into prosumers (leading-edge consumers who are an indicator of what the mainstream will soon be doing and thinking) and mainstream consumers (84% of the sample), the study finds that 59% of the former, and 62% of the latter are concerned about society’s addiction to or over-reliance on technology. And roughly half of each group worries that digital technology and multitasking are impairing people’s ability to think deeply and focus on one task at a time.

This concern could indeed be well-placed, given the recent finding that digital natives switch their attention between media platforms (i.e. TVs, magazines, tablets, smartphones, or channels within platforms) on average 27 times per hour. In fact, just under half of prosumers and mainstream consumers responding to the Euro RSCG survey say that being online distracts them too often.

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