Texting, Surfing, Studying?

[Commentary] Certain subjects make self-righteous parents of us all: our children thinking they are doing homework when in reality the text messages are flying, the Internet browsers are open, the video is streaming, the loud rock music is blaring on the turntable... but "The literature looking at media and its impact on attentional skills is just in its infancy," said Renee Hobbs, a professor of mass media and communications at Temple University and a specialist in media literacy. A recent and much-discussed study showed decreased productivity in adults who were multitasking — or as Dr. Dimitri Christakis, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington , put it, "The truth is you don't really multitask, you just think you do; the brain can't process two high-level cognitive things." What you are actually doing, he went on, is "oscillating between the two." So are teenagers any better at oscillating?