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posted by FatPhil on Tuesday January 09 2018, @12:44AM   Printer-friendly
from the short-attention-span dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by DannyB on Tuesday January 09 2018, @03:04PM

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 09 2018, @03:04PM (#620023) Journal

    On an Android phone, you can run your own code without having root access, and without paying any fees or getting anyone's permission. (Unlike Apple) The development tools run on Linux / Windows / Mac. All you have to do is go to your phone's settings and enable developer mode and allow installing apps from untrusted sources. Plug it in to your computer with development tools and edit-compile-debug away.

    You do not have to put your app into the Play store. You can run it on your device and only your device. Or you can easily install it on other devices by the same means of plugging in to your development computer. After your app is installed you can go back to settings and disable developer mode and untrusted sources.

    Also . . .

    You can put your APK file onto your own website.
    1. Your friends (or you) download the APK onto your device through the device's web browser
    2. Go to settings and allow installing apps from untrusted sources
    3. Go to your file manager and install your APK, which installs the app.
    4. (optional) delete the APK file
    5. Go to settings and undo step 2.

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    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
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