What if I told you that you don't even have to be using your phone -- or have it on -- in order for it to affect your cognitive capacity? Pretty wild, but it turns out to be true for many of us.
Smart phones can potentially make us smarter in some ways, like not needing to use our memory to hold many phone numbers or remember people's birthdays. This frees up space for other more important things. We can use our memory and thinking for critical analysis or even creative thinking. There are many conveniences like connecting to people from all over the world, search for something, watching shows, playing games, listening to music, etc. Smartphones have broken the barriers of technology being in a specific location, used to perform a specific task, even more than laptops did.
Everything we do seems to now be connected through one device, our smart phone. Wherever we go, there is our phone with us, ready to connect us to anything except our immediate environment that we find ourselves in. We wake up and check our phones, much like we do with computers. But as the day goes on, we keep using our phones anywhere we are. Whether we are stuck in traffic, waiting in line, or laying in bed, smart phones have connected us to more data for our attention shift it's focus around.
With an average of 85 interactions with our smartphones each day, it's no wonder that 91% of people surveyed say they never leave home without it. Smartphones have become such a part of many people's daily lives, that 46% report they wouldn't be able to live without their phones. How true that is for many of us without knowing it. Remove our phones and many of our lives would change.
We end up placing our attention on things for shorter periods of time. Even if we aren't switching from one thing to another on our phone, we're going from paying attention to our phones, then back to the environment we are in, and then back to our phones again. reduces our attention span and concentration. Concentration requires that we focus our attention on something for extended periods of time. But we are so used to seeking out stimulation for us to pay attention to, that fixating on one task becomes a problem for many of us.
Smartphones free time and memory, but unexpected deficits emerge in our ability to concentrate.
Have you ever tried writing something -- or doing something that doesn't involve your phone -- yet keep getting distracted and "interrupted" by your phone? The notifications draw our attention. Usually they are about someone contacting us, and we like getting that attention. We want to interact, give and receive attention.
What about when your phone is off? Does the mere presence of your phone keep nagging at you, almost as if it's whispering in your ear begging you to turn it on and pay attention to something? What if so-and-so send me a message? What if I'm missing an important email right no?
Our cognitive resources have a limited capacity. If we are automatically paying attention to our phone then these limited resources are being used up which causes the performance of other tasks to suffer. A new study has come out to test if the presence of a smart phone induces a "brain drain" on our control of attention.
The summary of the study is that 800 people put their phones on silent while they took a series of tests that require full concentration. Some people took the test with their phones on the desk, while others didn't have their phones in the same room. The results suggest the presence of someone's own smartphone is enough to reduce capacity to concentrate and impairs the cognitive functioning that is required at the time. Another experiment was based on how much people value their phones. Those who had the most dependence on their phone were the most negatively affected during the tests. But this was only the case if their phone was within sight.
Forcing ourselves to not do something we normally do -- like be drawn to our phones, to pay attention to them, to use them -- still has us using cognitive processes to not think. This creates a "brain drain" that affects us, such as affecting our capacity to concentrate. Tying to not use our phone, to force ourselves to not think about it, takes up cognitive power.
What's your experience with your own phone addiction, or lack thereof? Do you like to be with your phone at all times? Can you handle being without your phone for a day? Does not having your phone with you matter at all? How would your life change if smarphones were gone? In my case it doesn't matter. I don't even use it much. I do use my computer though ;)