Does a Smart Phone Lead to a Dumber You?

By Lisa Freedman

You can become psychologically addicted to almost anything—including, and maybe even especially, your phone,” says Earl Miller, PhD, a professor of neuroscience at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT.
A smartphone is basically a mini dopamine factory, doling out hits of the feel-good brain chemical as a reward when you get Likes on social media or relieve boredom by scrolling Instagram. Unfortunately, “the dopamine system is not satiable, so you continue to crave more and more,” says clinical psychologist Elyssa Barbash, PhD,of doctorelyssa.com.

That’s why the average person ends up reaching for their phone 80 times a day, according to one survey (if you think this sounds low, same). And chances are, you don’t love it. More than half of people between the ages 18 and 24 are seeking relief from social media, according to a recent report. Getting some distance is essential, because new studies suggest that small-screen obsessions are a major brain drain. Being attached to your phone (even if you’re not looking at it) can impair mental functions, sapping your working memory and your ability to perform tasks, according to a 2017 study. “Resisting your phone’s pull takes up cognitive resources,” explains study co-author Adrian Ward, PhD, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Texas at Austin’s McCombs School of Business.

Instead of focusing, “we’re constantly in this state of attention between what is happening in the moment and everything that could be happening, because that is what our phone represents.” Luckily, you don’t have to totally
ditch your phone to lessen its neggy effects. The more you train yourself not to, say, mindlessly scroll on the toilet, says Earl, the less you’ll feel the urge to. Here’s our not-even-close-to-unplugged-level plan for self-rehab.

1. DELETE YOUR MOST ADDICTIVE APPS

We’re not saying you can’t use Insta, Snapchat, or Twitter at all—just that you may have to check them on your laptop. Okay, fine: delete just one or two of them from your phone. It might hurt a little, but this will help short-circuit the dopamine loop you’re stuck in by reducing the number of triggers at your fingertips. The goal: make your phone so boring, that you resort to thinking deep thoughts in the Sephora line instead of posting about your latest mascara.

2. SET UP A ROADBLOCK

To stop reaching for your phone the second your favourite show cuts to a commercial, “put a hair tie around it,” suggests Catherine Price, author of How To Break Up With Your Phone. “It will act like a little speed bump and jolt
your brain out of autopilot.” When you see the hair tie, ask yourself whether or not you actually need to open any apps right then. If the answer is no, put your phone back in your pocket (or, better yet, in another room).

3. GET SOME DISTANCE

“If you’re a smoker and there are cigarettes in front of you and you’re trying to do something else, your brain will just keep wanting you to grab a cigarette,” says Catherine. Ditto for phones. Remove the temptation by stashing
yours in your bag while at work or in a drawer when you want to have a real conversation at home and turning on Apple’s Do Not Disturb While Driving feature, which sends customisable automatic replies to texts (‘Taking a tech break!’). If you’re worried about missing something important, set up your phone to allow calls only from your faves.

APPS YOU CAN DOWNLOAD TO DETOX

SPACE: A quiz first diagnoses how you use your phone (how often you are lured in and for what purpose). You then set better goals, and Space tracks how closely you stick to them. Free on iOS and Android.

MOMENT: Enter the amount of time you want to spend on your phone each day and Moment will notify you when you have hit your limit. It will also log your use by apps, to help you ID your biggest time-sucks. Free on iOS.

FREEDOM: You can set it up to block apps, websites, or the Internet for set periods of time. Override it if you must—unless you use the ‘locked mode’, which keeps you offline, no matter what. It’s available for Rs.170 a year on iOS.

 

This article was published in the July 2018 issue of Cosmopolitan India.