Is E-Mail Making You Dumb?
(article from eStat)
Is E-Mail Making You Dumb?
Published: April 26, 2005
(After May 03, 2005, this article will only be available to eStat Database subscribers.)
Is e-mail bad for your mental health? A new UK study has some surprising conclusions about the ramifications of living in the information age.
A survey of 1,100 Britons, conducted by TNS Research, and sponsored by Hewlett Packard, found that far from empowering workers, modern communications — phone calls, e-mails and text messages — distracted them and actually caused them to suffer a greater loss of IQ than if they were smoking marijuana.
In clinical trials, conducted by King’s College, London, and reported by The Mirror, checking messages or keyboarding temporarily knocks 10 points off a users’ intelligence, compared to a loss of only four points when smoking a joint. “Researchers say office staff are the most common sufferers of ‘infomania’ — losing concentration at work as their minds are in a permanent state of readiness to reply to texts and e-mails,” the Mirror reported. “Some even interrupt the flow of meetings to answer calls.”
In addition, the study found that the constant interruptions caused by the messages reduce productivity and leave people feeling tired and lethargic.
“This is a very real and widespread phenomenon,” Dr. Glenn Wilson, a psychiatrist at King’s College, told CNN. “We have found that this obsession with looking at messages, if unchecked, will damage a worker’s performance by reducing their mental sharpness.”
“The research suggests that we are in danger of being caught up in a 24-hour ‘always on’ society,” said David Smith of Hewlett Packard. Call it the “dark side” of 24/7.
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