Today’s New York Times Technology section holds an article about the effects of digital overload on the human brain. Bursts of information from bouncing between social media, email, mobile apps, rss feeds, and phone calls undermine a person’s ability to focus (no surprise there).

Humans have a primitive impulse to prioritize urgent items over important ones, and such digital bursts provoke a squirt of dopamine in the brain. Dopamine being the same chemical secreted in drug use, this naturally begs the question of whether excessive multitasking with digital interruptions causes addiction or other similar undesirable consequences of drug abuse.

One thing that seems clear is that heavy multitasking increases stress. A study at the University of California, Irvine, found that people interrupted by e-mail reported significantly increased stress compared with those left to focus. And stress hormones have been shown to reduce short-term memory, according to Gary Small, a psychiatrist at the University of California, Los Angeles.

On the other hand, certain research has indicated the beneficial effects of technology on the brain too, for example video games increasing hand-eye coordination and reaction times.

It’s not surprising then, that there’s a lively debate among scientists over whether technology’s influence on behavior and the brain is good or bad. And we can rest assured that, as Darwin’s theory kicks in, our future generations will have adapted to the always-on lifestyle, or maybe they’ll all be like the Swedes and choose their vacation spots based on the quality of the wireless signal.