Text and e-mail addicts can lower their IQ more than twice as much as pot smokers, according to new research.

Psychologists claim that tapping away on a mobile phone or computer keypad, or checking them for electronic messages temporarily knocks up to 10 points off the user’s IQ, compared to a four point drop after smoking marijuana.

Experts have called this fleeting phenomenon of enhanced stupidity, ‘infomania’, and is attributed to the constant distraction of ‘always on’ technology, when employees should be concentrating on what they are paid to do.

Infomania means that employees lose concentration as their minds remain fixed in an almost permanent state of readiness to react to technology, instead of focusing on the task in hand.

The effects on IQ were studied by Dr Glenn Wilson, a University of London psychologist.