That smartphone on your desk is making you dumber

[Binary_Bark]

The proliferation of smartphones has ushered in an era of unprecedented connectivity. Consumers around the globe are now constantly connected to faraway friends, endless entertainment, and virtually unlimited information. With smartphones in hand, they check the weather from bed, trade stocks—and gossip—while stuck in traffic, browse potential romantic partners between appointments, make online purchases while standing in-store, and live-stream each others’ experiences, in real time, from opposite sides of the globe. Just a decade ago, this state of constant connection would have been inconceivable; today, it is seemingly indispensable.1 Smartphone owners interact with their phones an average of 85 times a day, including immediately upon waking up, just before going to sleep, and even in the middle of the night (Perlow 2012; Andrews et al. 2015; dscout 2016). Ninety-one percent report that they never leave home without their phones (Deutsche Telekom 2012), and 46% say that they couldn’t live without them (Pew Research Center 2015). These revolutionary devices enable on-demand access to friends, family, colleagues, companies, brands, retailers, cat videos, and much more. They represent all that the connected world has to offer, condensed into a device that fits in the palm of one’s hand—and almost never leaves one’s side.

The sharp penetration of smartphones, both across global markets and into consumers’ everyday lives, represents a phenomenon high in “meaning and mattering” (e.g., Kernan 1979; Mick 2006)—one that has the potential to affect the welfare of billions of consumers worldwide. As individuals increasingly turn to smartphone screens for managing and enhancing their daily lives, we must ask how dependence on these devices affects the ability to think and function in the world off-screen. Smartphones promise to create a surplus of resources, productivity, and time (e.g., Turkle 2011; Lee 2016); however, they may also create unexpected deficits. Prior research on the costs and benefits associated with smartphones has focused on how consumers’ interactions with their smartphones can both facilitate and interrupt off-screen performance (e.g., Isikman et al. 2016; Sciandra and Inman 2016). In the present research, we focus on a previously unexplored (but common) situation: when smartphones are not in use, but are merely present.

Read More Here: http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/691462

 

[Slootvreter]

Oh yay, another study claiming smart phones (and instant access to information) makes you dumber.

 

[LazyLion]

I left mine at home today....

 

[bwana]

Smartphone owners interact with their phones an average of 85 times a day, including immediately upon waking up, just before going to sleep, and even in the middle of the night

Yeah, it's my alarm clock so that's a given. I also check to make sure the alarm is set before I go to sleep.

 

[sand_man]

I left mine at home today....

Dumb fck!

 

[LazyLion]

Dumb fck!

Hey, if it's not on me, it can't make me any dumber!

 

[SoulTax]

Oh yay, another study claiming smart phones (and instant access to information) makes you dumber.

It sort of does though, if it is used incorrectly, which it is in most people's cases. Access to global information is obviously amazing. Being able to research things instantly and as you need the info is great. The problem is that we all start to rely on smart phones for so much more. Same with just regular internet on the PC/laptop. We spell check instead of thinking about spell checking. We use the calculator instead of taking 30 seconds to work a moderate sum out in our heads. We google up the wiki on a topic to "refresh" our memory on something.

The last one makes our brains think that google will always be there for this type of stuff. So there is no incentive to commit complex things to memory. If you rely on google too much.

The others would not be a problem if the time that we saved by having all of this power at our fingertips, was spent on something constructive. But more often than not, we don't use that saved time constructively.

I know I speak for myself when I say that the internet has definitely made me more knowledgeable. And at first that made me smarter and sharper. But as the years have gone on, my mind has gotten lazy on some things that I am starting to realise I never should have allowed.

It is like Obesity for the mind. Except there isn't even a true visual identifier to point out when you have been indulging too much and for too long. Just like the advent of cheap, highly processed carbs and snacks have made the world fatter. The advent of cheap, highly available information and entertainment, has started to make the world less mentally sharp.