How Smartphones Hijack Our Minds - Part I

[question everything]

(snip)

Adrian Ward, a cognitive psychologist and marketing professor at the University of Texas at Austin, has been studying the way smartphones and the internet affect our thoughts and judgments for a decade. In his own work, as well as that of others, he has seen mounting evidence that using a smartphone, or even hearing one ring or vibrate, produces a welter of distractions that makes it harder to concentrate on a difficult problem or job. The division of attention impedes reasoning and performance.

A 2015 Journal of Experimental Psychology study, involving 166 subjects, found that when people’s phones beep or buzz while they’re in the middle of a challenging task, their focus wavers, and their work gets sloppier—whether they check the phone or not. Another 2015 study, which involved 41 iPhone users and appeared in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, showed that when people hear their phone ring but are unable to answer it, their blood pressure spikes, their pulse quickens, and their problem-solving skills decline.

(snip)

The researchers recruited 520 undergraduate students at UCSD and gave them two standard tests of intellectual acuity. One test gauged “available cognitive capacity,” a measure of how fully a person’s mind can focus on a particular task. The second assessed “fluid intelligence,” a person’s ability to interpret and solve an unfamiliar problem. The only variable in the experiment was the location of the subjects’ smartphones. Some of the students were asked to place their phones in front of them on their desks; others were told to stow their phones in their pockets or handbags; still others were required to leave their phones in a different room.

The results were striking. In both tests, the subjects whose phones were in view posted the worst scores, while those who left their phones in a different room did the best. The students who kept their phones in their pockets or bags came out in the middle. As the phone’s proximity increased, brainpower decreased.

(snip)

In an April article in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, Dr. Ward and his colleagues wrote that the “integration of smartphones into daily life” appears to cause a “brain drain” that can diminish such vital mental skills as “learning, logical reasoning, abstract thought, problem solving, and creativity.” Smartphones have become so entangled with our existence that, even when we’re not peering or pawing at them, they tug at our attention, diverting precious cognitive resources. Just suppressing the desire to check our phone, which we do routinely and subconsciously throughout the day, can debilitate our thinking. The fact that most of us now habitually keep our phones “nearby and in sight,” the researchers noted, only magnifies the mental toll.

(snip)

Continues on Part II

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-smartphones-hijack-our-minds-1507307811

[Skittles]

1. anyone who doesn't have a "smart" phone has seen what it does to people

[Igel]

2. And yet all the rage in high school is finding ways to use

cell phones in class.

Because there's no will to make students put them away. Educators say, "We're research-based and data-driven," but when faced with data where there was a control they stare and drool.

Parents are no help. "But what if she needs to text me?" Really, for 50k years kids out of earshot of parents managed to mostly survive. They learned to solve immediate problems. Sometimes they suffered, and learned that forbearance is a virtue and not an ugly side-effect of inconvenience.

But parents also deny that there's anything bad in all cellphones all the time. Until their kid is scarred for life by appearing in Instagram with pig ears. I long for cellphone jammers.

Heard one kid say that she was worried out of her mind because she sent a text to a friend and didn't hear back for a whole hour! "What if something had happened to you?" (Dude, it was during class time. You were both in class the entire time. If that part of the building had exploded or zombies had attacked, somebody would have texted you. Or maybe there'd have been an announcement or maybe the campus would have gone on lockdown. Don't exhibit your neuroticism so loudly!)


All the evidence is building up. You read differently with less recall, comprehension, and inferencing when you read on computer. We read by flipping back and forth in a non-fiction text. Our eyes don't follow a purely linear track during text processing. On screen, that's hard.

You learn differently when you learn on computer. And you think you've learned it well when you haven't learned it at all. It's about as bad as highlighting.

You don't learn as much when you take notes on computer.

You don't learn as much when all you have are those nice computer-administered multiple-choice exams.

Phones disrupt focus, lower test scores, and generally interfere with learning.

And yet parents, administrators, and even some teachers think that these are all great things. Often because, "It's relevant" or "the kids are engaged!" or "it's closing the technology gap."

But then you look at the research concerning the kids who have access to technology on an ongoing basis, at home and as they grow up, typically have higher SES parents and they use the school-provided technology in quantitatively different ways from kids with low-SES parents. The high-SES kids search better, more critically, and use their computers for academics to a greater extent; for low SES kids, the computers are more likely to be used for games and social media. Both groups use the computers for the same things--it's just the frequency of use type that varies so much. Give them all technology and you still don't close the technology gap. But you do make classroom management and education harder.

[Skittles]

3. excellent analysis; worthy of its own thread

there's a place for technology of course but I too am starting to see people who just cannot live even for a short while without it and it is distressing