Email can damage your IQ. I’ll tell you how in a moment. First, I need to get something off my chest. You see, this revelation has got me thinking about a recent present I bought my daughters. At the time I just thought I was helping them to build a sense of responsibility. Now I wonder if I’m damaging their IQs too.

When I was growing up, we were lucky to have lots of pets. Dogs, cats, budgies, a hamster. I even had a terrapin who lived in a fish bowl with a fake palm tree to shade itself under. All these pets helped us develop that sense of responsibility.

These days, the nature of our busy 21st century lives leaves us less time and space for pets. My kids have been limited to a couple of short-lived goldfish and, more recently, the pet of the moment: Tamagotchi.

Tamagotchi, for those who aren’t aware, are electronic pets. These charming little digital beings spend their digital days singing digital ditties, munching digital donuts and doing digital droppings. They even go on digital dates and generate digital offspring (tamababies) before their ultimate digital demise.

But here’s the rub: Tamagotchi are totally dependent. Being a ‘responsible’ Tamagotchi owner means reacting almost instantly to their every electronic cry. So the kids have become captive of these things. They will stop doing anything – even watching television – to fend for their digital friends.

Crazy, isn’t it? Letting technology govern your behaviour.

Which brings me back to email. As it turns out, we adults are just as bad at letting technology rule the roost. A study in the United Kingdom found that the majority of the ‘connected’ population have become addicted to checking their email. People will compulsively check and respond to email anywhere and anytime. Even on weekends and holidays. 

The researchers gave this phenomenon a name: info-mania. And they discovered some interesting consequences of this techno-distracted behaviour.

Their most dramatic finding was that being an ‘info-maniac’ – having a part of your brain constantly tuned in and waiting for the next message – effectively reduces your IQ by 10 points. This is a lot. Smoking marijuana only reduces your IQ by four points. It’s the same as going to work having missed a night’s sleep.

In essence, the researchers are saying that our most popular productivity tool – email – is damaging our productivity. Email is a fantastic, simple tool. But it will only work for us if we treat it properly. And using it for urgent communication isn’t doing that. It’s time we grew up and gave proper thought to the way we use email and all our other means of communication.

In the meantime, as our kids’ electronic pets apprentice a whole new generation of IQ-depleted info-maniacs, perhaps I should be taking myself off to the pet-shop.

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