Finishing homework, talking to friends on instant messenger, and trying to eat dinner all at the same time may save time later in the day, but new studies show that switching back and forth between tasks actually makes the teenage mind run slower and results in work being finished in a longer amount of time than if focusing on each task separately. When conquering multiple tasks simultaneously the brain loses connection to what is important. Thus, it takes longer to finish an assignment because the brain has to remember what it was doing beforehand and the information studied before answering a text message or taking a bite of dinner. While most teenagers have adapted well and are able to multitask with great speed, it  is hard for them to focus and concentrate on only one task when the time calls for it, such as on a test. This may be a contributing factor in the rise of ADD and ADHD cases in teenagers over the past decade or so.

Multitasking, while it saves time, isn’t a maximum performance of a person’s ability. No matter how good someone is at multitasking, her work will always be less accurate when focusing on multiple tasks. There is a great difference in the performance of someone’s work when focusing solely on a task and when focusing on many at once. Because of the need to pull out multiple loads of information, the brain is scattered when trying to focus on multiple points and there just doesn’t seem to be enough brain power to focus on each task fully. To make up for this, the brain starts to shut down connections, making a person have to review the material several times to understand or memorize it.

Some argue that a bit of multitasking actually helps them, such as playing music in the background while doing work. Even then, the mind gets distracted, thinking of the lyrics of the song that could branch off into a tangent of thoughts that wouldn’t help someone finish her work. There will always be distractions, though, even if someone turns off her phone and computer. Siblings, parents, and all sorts of different factors can make the mind become distracted because it is difficult to focus completely on one task without straying to another, especially if the former task is something extremely boring. It’s just a matter of forcing the thoughts from someone’s mind and making them try to focus as much as they can on the task.

So, if you still think you can multitask successfully, then go to http://www.npr.org/news/graphics/2008/oct/science/faces_quiz_lm.html to test your skills! There, you’ll find that younger people usually were quicker and scored higher on this memory test, which meant they were better at suppressing distractions. Forty-four percent of elder people completed the test accurately compared to an eighty-eight percent of younger people, showing that as you age you lose the ability to ignore distractions and as a result lessens the ability to multitask.