Talking on the phone whilst driving is about as dangerous as driving drunk. According to the Washington Post article, ‘Talking on a Cellphone While Driving is Risky,’ published in February 2014, driving while on the phone, whether it be hands-free or not, is just as dangerous as driving with a .08 blood alcohol level. Driving while talking on the phone is just one form of multitasking that is damaging your brain. This form of multitasking,  including texting while studying, is lowering IQs everywhere, and have people convinced that they can actually do it.

A lot of research and many studies have been done on the subject of talking on the phone vs. drunk driving. Much of this research was done by the National Highway & Transportation Administration in 2013. It says that both these things cause impaired driving, not braking on time, and weaving through traffic. The driver who just ran that red light or drove out when it wasn’t their turn was most likely on their phone. Their brain was trying to use 200% of that part of itself at once. The brain, momentarily not knowing what’s happening, gives one task less effort. One study done by the National Center for Biotechnology Information in 2013, says that the problem with talking on the phone is the fact that the person on the phone isn’t in the vehicle. In this study, they had a group of participants talk on the cell phone (some with hands-free devices, some with hand-held), while the other group listened to an audiobook, ‘Dracula’. The group listening to the book had higher concentration levels than the one that was on the phone. This is believed to be because it makes the brain think that someone else is in the car. Having a passenger in the car gives the driver higher concentration levels as they are concerned about keeping the passenger safe. The audiobook, therefore acts as a placebo effect and tricks the brain into being safer. However, talking on the phone while driving is just one form of multitasking that is affecting people’s memories and lowering IQs.

Multitasking in general is what’s killing the brain and how it functions, talking on the phone while driving is only part of it. The human brain is made to focus on one thing at a time; in order to multitask the brain needs to be giving more than one task 100% of its attention, making multitasking impossible. Say someone is studying and texting at the same time; these two tasks use the same part of the brain and need the same amount of attention to be fully functional. According to an article called, ‘Multitasking is Killing Your Brain’ published in 2015, by Larry Kim, founder of Wordstream, such tasks like chewing gum and walking have no effect; they don’t need the brain’s full attention. The tasks that need more concentration, ie. studying and texting, need 100% of that part of the brain each. If a person tries to do both tasks at once, one is going to get less attention. This task will most likely be the one that takes less effort for the person to do in a sense. As texting uses the same part of the brain, and still needs that parts full attention, it’s easier for a person to text someone back quickly than to read a chapter from a book. Another study done by the University of London found that people who multitasked while doing cognitive tasks had their IQs drop about the same amount as they would if you stayed up all night. With men, if done enough, IQs can drop up to 15 points.
 

Teens are the ones who have it the hardest with cellphones and schoolwork. The distractions come so easily now that it can be hard to go even 5 minutes without getting a notification or text. California State University did a study in 2013 that they called the ‘New Marshmallow Test.’ The original ‘Marshmallow Test’ involved having a kid sit down and put a marshmallow in front of them. If they waited a certain amount of time they could have two marshmallows instead of just one. In the ‘New Marshmallow Test,’ they took 263 students (middle school, high school, and college), and watched them while they studied. Larry Rosen, the psychology professor at the university and director of this study, marked down what the students were doing once every minute for 15 minutes. This included regular homework and studying but it also included Facebook, texting, Twitter etc. By the two minute mark, most of the students started to get off task; by the end of the 15 minutes, only 65% of the time was actually being productive. This is impairing their memory and how they understand the information they were reading. Of course, the easy explanation is to just turn the phone off. However, just because it sounds easy doesn’t mean it is actually easy. What if there’s an emergency? What if a parent calls? Parents don’t normally like the excuse, “my phone was turned off.” Even if these excuses aren’t plausible teens will still use the excuse to keep the device on. The University of New Hampshire conducted a survey and found that 80% of their students texted during class, 65% say that they sent 1-10 text messages in total. This is impairing students’ memory and intake of information even more than just being on their phone while studying. So, in turn, this translates through test scores and can be very obvious that they aren’t paying attention. Even though most students would say that they are, because they are good multitaskers, in the long run be most affected.

A study done by Stanford University in 2009 took two groups of people: people who are frequent multitaskers and think they’re good at it, and a group of people who said they don’t multitask. They then had both groups perform different tasks. They found that the people that multitasked did worse than the people who did each task one at a time. This is believed to be because the multitaskers have trouble organizing their thoughts. Whilst thinking ahead can be a good thing, multitaskers tend to think about the next task before they’ve even started on the one in front of them. This, in turn, also made the multitaskers slower at getting tasks done and moving on to the next task. The brain is only capable of giving one task 100% of its attention at a time, so when people try and do it, their brain slows down and can’t focus.

One solution for this is for people to sit back and relax. Realize that doing one thing at a time is actually more beneficial. Things will get done more efficiently and quicker if people would do this. If people would realize that multitasking is doing more harm than good, there would be less accidents everywhere.