Smartphones generate anxiety, and many people can’t focus. This adverse effect may have long-term repercussions on memory, attention, and cognitive capacity. I can’t remember a nine-digit phone number because I use a phone book. In my family, both my father (with my grandmother) and my mother have Alzheimer’s (with my grandmother and my mother).
Are smartphones changing our behavior?
Indeed. The internet has transformed our behavior in 20 years, right? Why shouldn’t a smartphone?
There isn’t an explicit argument about whether smartphones influence human cognitive ability, but we know this may happen on functional and structural levels. Screens have affected our somatosensory cortex, which controls touch.
The 1970s had TV screens. Which was another technological instrument that revolutionised how we perceive the world, ourselves, and events. For decades, TV was the dominant source of human information, even if the band Tits said (right) “television made me too dumb.” It would be naïve not to suppose that smartphone displays influence people’s behaviour, including their gadget engagement. Smart phone users may interact with content by touching the screen. Many experts claim that the gadget that most people use to access the internet is also changing how we interact with the world.
Now, consider about the links (or hypertext) utilised to get important and relevant information online. Such associations can distract your memory, disrupt your concentration, and interfere with your capacity to recall information and material.
A whole generation is constantly distracted because they rely on smartphones to keep up with current events. Many teens say, “I can’t accomplish anything for more than 15 minutes without checking my phone.”
Changes are happening
Virtual environments with lots of visual information can avoid simultaneous information overload, which makes it hard to concentrate. This may happen on multiple levels, and it fosters the habit of continually resorting to Google for information rather than attempting to remember what our memory has blocked. I’m familiar. Occasionally, I feel like my memory is fractured, and I don’t hesitate to utilize Google to find facts I can’t recall because I know a mental block or cognitive memory failure has happened. This can be caused by years of using the internet and cellphones.
The only good news is I’m not getting Alzheimer’s or losing my memory due to technology. Considering the changes in behaviour we’ve seen as technology users over the previous two decades, such a side effect can be deemed “natural.”
Effective for learning?
Information processing isn’t always harmful. Our brain reorganizes itself based on behaviour, where we live, and overall life. Our brains must adjust to new ideas, plans, dreams, thoughts, and assumptions throughout our lives.
Technology and information are similar. Since the first pictograms, facts and events have been displayed via external devices. Books and notebooks we use in school build objective thinking, learning, and moral and ethical ideals, among other qualities, which require a brain to arrange.
Receiving knowledge from other sources makes a person’s life more complicated and comprehensive. Smartphones and tablets can improve our cognitive and memory processes, much like a book or notepad.
We’re doing more with our gadgets today. Writing an essay on the computer, reading emails on the tablet, accessing social media on the smartphone. We become multitaskers, and this might lead our brains to freeze up.
For those who can multitask well, the benefit is more time to focus on activities that matter, with a stronger focus on satisfaction and getting more done. Time to recall valuable things. The major difficulty is the repercussions of multitasking lifestyle’s repercussions. The hippocampus, the brain area related to spatial orientation, is most affected by this mental task rhythm. What will happen if we don’t use this brain field, since Google Maps can show all the streets in the world but gives a disproportionate sense of space, preventing the hippocampus from developing properly? The brain is a muscle that has to be trained, and it rarely does just one thing. If the hippocampus isn’t trained to do all its responsibilities, a person loses spatial orientation, which can be an issue for taxi drivers, Uber drivers, and others.
The consequences on what is investigated at this time
Nothing is easy now. A U.S. research that tracks more than 10,000 youngsters annually to evaluate how smartphones impact neurocognitive development shows a direct association between cortical shrinkage and technology. No specific science demonstrates this association (at least for now), especially since this impact does not occur organically over time, which might mean we are confronting a generation that is growing or ageing quicker.
New generations are developing earlier, with or without technology. We may see this when living with the youngest and monitoring their conduct when expressing thoughts and feelings.
Are we gaining anything from all this?
Smartphones, mobile phones, and computing ruled the globe. Technology is part of our vast mass social experiment of our life. Even those who aren’t in touch with technology are indirectly influenced by it.
What if science determines that what we lose through technology won’t be compensated like it has been historically? Will we modify everything to honour the past or safeguard the future?
No evidence requires us to face this potential reality yet. The signals are strong that we’ll have to handle this matter seriously soon.
We can’t place doors or walls in our connection with technology, but we face a huge challenge: developing the social processes needed to recover control over what’s good or harmful for us. Undoubtedly, social networks, excessive information consumption, and the new culture that dictates that an individual is only tuned in when he remains on top of everything took from us some elements that can be lost over time.
We cease interacting truly with others in person or online, become more independent and less empathic, stop thinking about others with compassion, and reject authenticity and transparency to maintain appearances and relationships.