India Today Conclave
India Today Conclave

Here's How Your Smartphone is Making You Stupid

This research will put a serious damper on your relationship with your tech-forward phone...

21 June, 2018
Here's How Your Smartphone is Making You Stupid

Back in the good ol‘ days, a dog was man’s best friend. Cut to present, it’s The Smartphone. 

There is nothing that a smartphone can’t do—from keeping track of your period to counting calories on your behalf when you’re trying to stick to a diet—it has essentially become an extension of our lives. But a recent study by researchers at the University of Waterloo suggests that excessive use of smartphones is affecting people’s intuitive thinking and making them lazier. In simple words, using your phone’s search engine frequently, diminishes your ability to rely on your instincts to take decisions. Talking about the research, Gordon Pennycook, co-lead author of the study and a PhD candidate at the Department of Psychology at Waterloo, says, “People have become so accustomed to looking up information that they actually know or could easily learn, they’re unwilling to make the effort to think about it.”

The research, published in the journal Computers In Human Behavior, was conducted on 660 participants examining various skills including intuitive and analytical thinking along with verbal and numeracy prowess. Then the researchers looked at the participants’ smartphone habits. Nathaniel Barr, the other lead author of the paper and a post-doctoral researcher at Waterloo, adds, “Decades of research have revealed that humans are always eager to avoid making an effort when it comes to problem-solving, and that people are increasingly using their smartphones as an extension of their mind.” Both Pennycook and Barr weren’t shocked at the results. Pennycook says that their research provides support for an association between heavy smartphone use and lowered intelligence. Although, to conclude whether smartphones actually decrease intelligence requires further research.

THE SMART...WITHOUT A SMARTPHONE:
Mental math: We don’t do simple calculations in our heads anymore. Don’t you remember how much you enjoyed mental math in the pre- smartphone era? Pro Tip: try to work out the problem in your head every time a situation requires everyday math rather than reaching out to your phone’s calculator app.

Can’t spell to save our lives: While ‘autocorrect fails’ are nearly a comedy genre, relying on your phone’s spell check won’t help you polish your own skills. Pro Tip: turn off the autocorrect feature and you’ll remember how to spell simple words like ‘occasion’ and ‘necessary’ correctly.

Not remembering phone numbers: Millennials probably won’t ever have phone numbers on their fingertips. Pro Tip: it helps to memorise or write down important numbers, just in case something happens to your phone—you wouldn’t want to be stuck contact-less, would you?

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