Myth: teens can multitask homework and their phones
No. Stanford research found heavy media multitaskers are more easily distracted and worse at switching tasks — so keep phones in another room during homework.
No. Stanford research found heavy media multitaskers are more easily distracted and worse at switching tasks — so keep phones in another room during homework.
Your teen insists, "I can text and do math at the same time." It feels like a skill. A landmark Stanford study says it is not one.
Researchers Eyal Ophir, Clifford Nass, and Anthony Wagner screened 262 students and compared heavy media multitaskers with light ones in their PNAS study. They expected the heavy multitaskers to be better at something. They were not. Heavy multitaskers were more thrown by irrelevant items on screen, made more false alarms on a memory test, and — most surprisingly — were worse at switching between tasks, the very thing they do all day.
"We kept looking for what they're better at, and we didn't find it," said Ophir. Nass was blunter: "They're suckers for irrelevancy. Everything distracts them."
The Washington University Center for Teaching and Learning sums it up plainly: heavy media multitasking is linked to a reduced ability to ignore distractions and focus on what matters — even after accounting for differences in academic aptitude and personality.
A fair note: the lab groups were small, and the study makes no causal claims — maybe distractible people multitask more, not the other way around. But either way, nobody is good at it. The myth stands busted.
The parent move is simple and free: put the phone out of sight — not face-down on the desk, but in a drawer or another room on silent. Even an idle phone tugs at attention. Then run homework in a 25-minute focus block: timer on, notifications off, one task at a time. Focus, it turns out, is a practice — and the room you set up teaches it.