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Anecdotes like yours don't prove anything. That's why we have science.

Without a control group and test group we don't know if your conclusions are statistically valid. Maybe most people get better grades when they watch TV and play video games.



I probably mis-worded my thoughts. I did not meant "it's true for x therefore it's true for the whole set". It's definetly not something we can generalize. At least, we can say that he's not completely wrong.

Nevertheless, I still believe that if such study was conducted, it would tend in that direction. The actual difference between a multi-tasker and a uni-tasker might not be very large, there might even not be any difference in some cases. Considering how the memory supposedly works, I find it hard to believe that one would retain the equivalent amount of information while multi-tasking than while uni-tasking.

This is a study from 2007 that goes in the same direction. It focuses on the impacts of social networking sites on high-schooler grades. [pdf]http://www.iiisci.org/journal/CV$/sci/pdfs/E214BL.pdf


Isn't it just common sense that doing two things at once means you'll have less time for both?




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