Are Smartphones Making Us Dumb? Part 1

Smartphones are ubiquitous in society - and more than 70% of users say they are concerned about potential addiction. I was working at M.I.T. in the USA when the first iPhone was released. I worked in the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, right across the road from the William H. Gates Building, which is arguably the major hub of technological development in the world. You can imagine the buzz around this new tech – but, to be honest, I thought it was going to be just a fad. I used Apple computers but didn’t see the point of the new, expensive phones. Jeez, was I wrong!

The modern smartphone is a marvel of technology. We can take photos and videos at a resolution much greater than professional photographers were able to achieve less than 10 years ago. We can snap a quality shot of our breakfast, upload it to Instagram, and obtain thousands of likes before it even gets cold. The phone can map out the fastest route to our destination with updates on traffic congestion and accidents. It will then give estimates of time to arrival or alternative routes if we take a wrong turn. We can check our email and watch movies while waiting at the bus stop. We can upload our own movies while sitting in a park. We can check our social media updates and laugh at funny memes while sitting in a café. What a marvel!

There are even health apps to monitor the number of steps for the distance we travel, and check our heart rate and stress levels. We can order a taxi or a meal or a new outfit without talking to anybody. We can keep up to date with our thousands of online ‘friends’ without leaving home or making eye contact with another real person. We can play games with someone on the other side of the world. We can gamble on the latest poker championship in another country. The smartphone has made our lives online and fast. The current generation is growing up in a world where they have access to almost anything instantaneously, 24/7. Yet this same generation has fewer real friends and less physical contact with real people than past generations, and this is having real consequences for individuals, communities, and society.

More than 70% of people say they are rarely more than 5 feet away from their handset. In the UK, 25% of kids have a smartphone by the age of six. In the US, teens spend an average of nine hours a day on a screen. This is the first time in history that a new technology has gone global in such a short space of time. We are conducting a worldwide experiment without any forethought and little control. It’s time we reflected on whether this new technology is everything we believe it is – and what the unintended consequences might be.

Governments are installing traffic lights on the ground because of the number of accidents caused by people looking at their phones when crossing the road. In the USA, it is estimated that there are 11,000 injuries a year due to walking and using a smartphone. That is more than 30 people a day injured because they can’t look up from their smartphones! Imagine what the worldwide number is – we are literally killing ourselves for our smartphones.

But of course, smartphones are making our lives better, right? We now have access to our calendars, our emails, the Internet, and social media all the time, if we want to, we can access gaming, gambling, fake news, videos, and movies 24 hours a day. Work colleagues can now send us documents that we can edit and return while sitting in a café. Our boss can monitor our movements and our productivity 24 hours a day. Our 10,000+ “friends” that we’ve never met can ping us on social media. We can get updates on the latest news feed or fashion trends from anywhere around the world. But is this really making our lives better?

The majority of adult users say they are addicted to their smartphones and would like to have more control – and 90% of college students in the US show physical signs of addiction. Since the release of the first iPhone in 2007, we have seen a significant increase in stress, anxiety, depression, and suicide. There has been a corresponding decrease in “real” socializing, physical activity, sleep, tolerance, and resilience. A study by Professor Jene Tenge and colleagues in 2017 looked at more than 500,000 teenagers and showed increased depression and suicidal tendencies correlated with screen use. This study was attacked from many directions at the time but since then there have been multiple supporting scientific publications. In the same period, the standard of living has increased, the number of global conflicts has decreased, the availability of health and medical resources has increased, accessibility to education has increased, and violent crimes and drug taking have decreased. We are as a global people, much better off today than we were before the iPhone was released. But we’re more stressed than ever.

What is it about that smartphone that is having such a negative impact on our lives? It is a complex range of issues and both age and sex influence which issues are most problematic. Unfortunately, I believe that like smoking and alcohol, it will take us some time to universally recognise the dangers. It will also take some time to establish appropriate boundaries around their use. How many lives will be negatively affected before we act?

Why is the smartphone having such an impact when the advent of television and computers did not? One of the most obvious differences is portability. Smartphones are small enough to fit in a pocket. They can be with us 24 hours a day. This seems like a huge positive. Such a benefit to be able to be connected all the time, right? We can receive emails, updates, likes, and tweets 24 hours a day no matter where we are or what we are doing. But this initial benefit has been rapidly shown to have dramatically negative consequences: we now have no “down time” and we need downtime.

We hear constantly from the latest health guru that we need to be in the moment. That we need to be present. We need to stop. Busy is not the new happy. Busy is not productive nor is it healthy. Not only for our physical health but also for our brain’s health, we need time to stop, relax and reflect. Memories are formed and toxins are removed when we stop and relax. Improved mental health occurs when we stop and relax. Innovation and creativity occur when we stop and relax. We are more productive when we have time to stop and relax. It doesn’t matter whether you are meditating, contemplating, procrastinating, or just staring out to sea. We need to stop and be in the moment for our physical and brain health. If you have a smartphone on you, you do not – cannot – do this. When we have a smartphone close to us and it is turned off at least 10% of our attention is stolen by the phone. If it is turned on and buzzes, beeps, or vibrates then all the attention is stolen by the phone. We are never alone to just stop and relax.

To be continued.....