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Tech

31st Jan 2017

This is what happens to your brain when you never put down your phone

We all have a friend who needs to hear this.

Megan Roantree

It’s not good.

That’s the short answer, however, scientists have found the exact effect phone addiction has on your brain.

Needless to say, almost all of us are addicted to our phone to some extreme, whether it’s feeling naked when you don’t have it or constantly scrolling through all your apps.

But sadly it’s not making your brain any stronger.

Scientists looked at the addiction of smartphones and published the findings in the Journal of research for consumers.

It found that when we use our phone to make just about everything we go easier, it makes our brains very lazy.

If you think about it, even if you wanted to know how long to boil an egg for, if you type it into Google, the exact number of minutes will come up in bold as part of an extract from a website, right at the top of your search, so you don’t even have to click into a site or read through an article to find out.

If you need to do a mathematical equation, you’ll get your calculator out on your phone because you always have access to it.

 “One thing the smartphone might do is make it easier for us to not exercise our brain,” Co-author Gordon Pennycook said.

“It doesn’t mean that we’re making the car faster or slower, it just means we’re not using it to the maximal capacity.”

So if there is something you need to know or do and don’t actually need your phone for it, maybe leave it in a drawer somewhere, or at least in your pocket for a while.

Topics:

smartphone