> It's the sheer number of simultaneous but different conversations that makes it especially brutalizing.

This seems plausible.  One thing I sometimes do (I'm doing it now) is to lock down my switching.  I worked all morning on work stuff, now I'm switching over here for a bit and talking to you guys, and I will then switch away for the rest of the night.  It's fragmentation, but not terrible.

Hard to be disciplined about it, though.  Easy for me to go off the rails.

elvismercury

mostly_harmless

The habits and rituals of fragmentation

I definitely feel this way. 

Social media let's us have a conversation with people who aren't right in front if us. It's a little more public and a lot lower bandwidth. When we have multiple posts and multiple comment threads it's like trying to have several in person conversations simultaneously--doesn't work well. 

I wonder if we would feel less fragmented if we only had one post or comment thread going at a time. Maybe a thirty second interruption isn't so big a deal if you are switching between only two tasks, subjects. It's the sheer number of simultaneous but different conversations that makes it especially brutalizing. 