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I've heard it said before: we are now able to multitask, but not fully concentrate. We know a mile wide, but we understand an inch deep. This is the paradox of our time.

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WASHINGTON - The people who multi-task the most are the ones who are worst at it.

That is the surprising conclusion of researchers at Stanford University, who found multi-taskers are more easily distracted and less able to ignore irrelevant information than people who do less multi-tasking.

"The huge finding is, the more media people use the worse they are at using any media. We were totally shocked," said Professor Clifford Nass of Stanford's communications department.

The researchers studied 262 college undergraduates, dividing them into high and low multi-tasking groups and comparing such things as memory, ability to switch from one task to another and being able to focus on a task.

Their findings are reported in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

When it came to such essential abilities, people who did a lot of multi-tasking didn't score as well as others, Prof Nass said.

"Is multi-tasking causing them to be lousy at multi-tasking, or is their lousiness at multi-tasking causing them to be multi-taskers?" Prof Nass wondered. "Is it born or learned?"

In a society that seems to encourage more and more multi-tasking, the findings have social implications, Prof Nass observed. Multi-tasking is already blamed for car crashes as several states restrict the use of cell phones while driving. Lawyers or advertisers can try to use irrelevant information to distract and refocus people to influence their decisions.

In the study, the ability to ignore irrelevant information was tested by showing participants a group of red and blue rectangles, blanking them out, and then showing them again and asking if any of the red ones had moved.

The test required ignoring the blue rectangles. The researchers thought people who do a lot of multi-tasking would be better at it.

"But they're not. They're worse. They're much worse," said Prof Nass.

The high media multi-taskers could not ignore the blue rectangles. "They couldn't ignore stuff that doesn't matter. They love stuff that doesn't matter," he said. AP

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From TODAY, World – Wednesday, 26-Aug-2009

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