Parenting & Family Quote by Marilyn vos Savant

Multitasking gets sold as a modern superpower, but Marilyn vos Savant treats it like an untested drug: maybe it seems useful now, but the side effects could be permanent. The phrasing is deliberately modest - "would not encourage" and "we don't know" - yet the caution lands hard because it flips the cultural burden of proof. Instead of demanding evidence that multitasking harms kids, she implies the more responsible stance is restraint until we understand what it does to developing brains and habits.

The key move is in "where those efforts may lead". She is not warning about a single bad grade or a distracted homework session; she is gesturing toward path-dependency. Childhood attention is training, not just performance. If you rehearse constant switching, you may wire in a default mode of shallow engagement: a mind that expects stimulation, resists boredom, and treats focus as optional. The line quietly reframes multitasking as identity formation.

There is also a cultural critique smuggled into the parental tone. Adults praise "productivity" while building environments engineered for interruption: notifications, tabs, background media, split-screen everything. By invoking children and teens, vos Savant sidesteps tech panic and goes after something more uncomfortable: our readiness to normalize fractured attention before we can name the cost.

Context matters: as a public intellectual associated with measurement, puzzles, and "smarts", she is arguing that intelligence is not just horsepower but stewardship. The subtext is almost conservative in the best sense: protect the capacity for deep work and sustained thought because once it atrophies, getting it back is not guaranteed.