The research shows that doing several things at once can actually FACILITATE performance on homework tasks! This is only the case when the "background activities" are fairly mindless, however, If the background activity requires a lot of concentration and the homework is the "mindless" activity, then you might have a problem! Teenagers have always enjoyed doing their homework along with other activities (in the old days it was watching T.V. and doing homework) and it seems to work because homework can be a tedious task that the brain cannot tolerate when having to give it full attention with no soothing distractions. Bottom line, however, if your son is not performing well in school, then he obviously has to make some changes in how he approaches his work. If his marks are in his normal range, I would leave him alone; if they are dropping, I would suggest you put up some reasonable limits on his activities. As far as the addictive nature of all those screens, the facts are not yet fully available to us. It is certainly true that today's young people are spending an average of 7 screen hours a day (each screen activity counts for 1 separate hour, including texting, movies, t.v., computers, game equipment, etc.). Again, in the "olden days" people routinely sat in front of their T.V. sets for an entire evening. Intuitively, a well-rounded life that includes sports, socialization, creative endeavors, community activities and so on seems to be a richer way to live. However, many teens do have all of those kinds of activities going on IN ADDITION to their screen time. I think at least talking about these things with your son just as a way of sharing thoughts and feelings would be good for both of you.  Sarah Chana

My teenagers do the same thing and frankly, I have given up trying to get them to stop. I'm glad to hear that it may be harmless or even good for them, because I feel it's a losing battle to try to get them to change their ways. Maybe I'm just too old and out of it but their constant stimulation seems really crazy to me. But like Sarah Chana said, if their marks are good, there isn't much of an argument to make. My kids are top students so I can't complain too much about how they get there, can I?

But I think that brings up the issue of loss of parental control. You're giving up because you have been ineffective - not because you changed your mind about what you wanted them to be doing. I'm not pointing fingers here because I do the same thing. I can no longer get my kids into bed (they're 17 & 19) and since they somehow manage to get themselves up every morning, there's nothing I can say (anymore) about it. I've told them till I was blue in the face about the need for sleep. They don't care - gotta stay up on that computer till the wee hours of the night. Anyway, I don't recall if my parents had that much trouble with me. Maybe they did. And I turned out excellent!