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Your smartphone is making you stupid, antisocial and unhealthy
A decade ago, smart devices promised to change the way we think and interact, and they have – but not by making us smarter. Eric Andrew-Gee explores the growing body of scientific evidence that digital distraction is damaging our minds.
[...] The evidence for this goes beyond the carping of Luddites. It's there, cold and hard, in a growing body of research by psychiatrists, neuroscientists, marketers and public health experts. What these people say – and what their research shows – is that smartphones are causing real damage to our minds and relationships, measurable in seconds shaved off the average attention span, reduced brain power, declines in work-life balance and hours less of family time.
They have impaired our ability to remember. They make it more difficult to daydream and think creatively. They make us more vulnerable to anxiety. They make parents ignore their children. And they are addictive, if not in the contested clinical sense then for all intents and purposes.
[...] Smartphones are "literally using the power of billion-dollar computers to figure out what to feed you," Mr. Harris said. That's why you can't look away.
Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/your-smartphone-is-making-you-stupid/article37511900/
I am left wondering. Is it the devices? Certain apps? Or ourselves?
Ed's (FP) Note: I seem to remember BBC's More or Less radio program (available online still, I'm sure) addressing the "attention span" claim, and debunking it, mostly by virtue of it being a bit too intangible to measure. However, even if it is only confirmation bias, there's a good chance we've noticed some of the traits mentioned in the article in others, perhaps in ourselves too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 09 2018, @02:21AM (4 children)
Massively improved inspection reporting, inventory tracking, financial tracking, navigation, portable video camera, audio recording, IR cameras, sleep sensors, levels, light meters, noise meters, reminders, reusable check lists, 3D scanners, etc... They're only non-productive if you use them like an idiot. Don't try to use them for typing-heavy tasks. Look at them professionally and they've transformed whole industries.
Mobile computers existed before cell phones. They were beasts. Current devices are still called cell phone because that's their roots. PDAs died out instead of adopting cell tech. "Cell" is also far easier to say than "mobile" and mobile doesn't distinguish between all the other types of portable computing devices (there are dozens of categories). That's why no one calls them mobiles anymore.
Your hat has damaged your brain.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 09 2018, @02:45AM (3 children)
Of course these devices are useful to corporations; they have the money to get other corporations to produce useful, application-specific devices for their drones in the field.
I'm talking about personal computing, where a whole world of productivity was open to anyone who bought a computer to own; for the imaginative individual, the smartphone has been a disaster—not only is it constrained by the iron fist of corporate manufacturers, but the philosophy of a walled "garden" has begun infecting traditional computing platforms, too.
Why do you think people like me are so upset? It's because we see the potential of these "devices", if only each of us could more readily use them to compute as each of us sees fit!
(Score: 2) by chromas on Tuesday January 09 2018, @11:42AM (2 children)
I have porn and Java in my pocket. What more does a person need?
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday January 09 2018, @12:34PM
A 'joystick' to use with the porn.
:)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Funny) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday January 09 2018, @02:07PM
Less java.