The institute of psychiatry at king's college London sent the world of info junkies into a mild panic earlier this year by declaring that e-mail might do more damage to your brain than smoking pot. Of course, a closer examination of the study is less startling but still fascinating. Researchers asked two sets of subjects to take IQ tests. One group had to check e-mail and respond to instant messages while taking the test. The second group just sat down and did the test without distractions. Surprise, surprise, the distracted group didn't do as well on the test—10 points worse than the control group. In similar testing conditions, people intoxicated by marijuana had scores 8 points lower. So researchers drew at- tention to their study by noting that multitasking is worse for your ability to concentrate than getting stoned. The IQ loss also.turns out to be temporary. Remove the multitasking requirement, and test scores jump back to normal. Nonetheless, because the study generated such a buzz, it does tell us something useful—many of us suspect we're not doing our best thinking in front of a computer screen. We're worried about what cultural critic David Shenk calls "data smog" as we wade through e-mail, voice mail, and instant messages, as well as the near-infinite distraction of surfing the World Wide Web. This is the dark side of the connected age: We have vastly more information at our fingertips than ever before but less time to make sense of it.
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