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 Are you in love with your smartphone? When it isn’t with you, do you miss it? When you have a question, do you feel the overwhelming desire to consult it? Are you mute in its presence? Does the mere sight of it leave you dumbstruck?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, good news! You are most definitely in a relationship with your smartphone.
The bad news, according to a recent study, however, is that the relationship isn’t a good one: In fact, this particular relationship is making you…well…dumb. (Unless of course you were already stupid. In that case, carry on.)
Research from the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas, Austin, concluded that a person’s cognitive capacity (ability to hold and process information) is limited in the presence of smartphones.
The researchers came to this conclusion by testing three different groups of participants: people with their smartphones visible on their desks, people with their smartphones stored in their pockets or bags, and those whose smartphones were stored in an entirely different room.
Those participants that had their smartphones stored in another room performed significantly better on the tests than those who had their phones facedown, but visible, on their desks. Also, those that took the test while the smartphones were stored in their pockets or purses, only slightly underperformed those with their phones stored in another room.
The takeaway, according to researchers, is simple. The mere presence of the phone (on or off, facedown or right side up) is a distraction and it isn’t the familiar ping of an incoming message or text that is responsible for the distraction. Just the site of the phone alone is the actual distraction.
Are you distracted by your smartphone?
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