The Negative Effects of Smartphones on an Individual's Cognitive Abilities

Introduction

Together with other technological advancements, smartphones have bacome an integral part of modern people's lifes. It is estimated thta smartphones owners interact with their phones an average of 85 times a day, including immediately upon waking up, just before going to sleep and even in the middle of the night. 91 percent report that they never leave home without their phones. 46 percent say that they couldn’t live without a smartphone. At the University of Texas, Austin, there’s been plenty of researches shining light on the negative effects of smartphones usage, but new evidence suggests smartphones are damaging cognitive abilities even when they are not being used. The mere presence of smartphones within peripheral view turns out, could have some pretty serious cognitive consequences.

Additionally, as Fran Molloy wrote in her article “Smartphones Are Making Us Stupid – and May Be a 'Gateway Drug'”, some parents are buying electronics in hopes of their children learning how to become more technologically advanced and help them learn school material easier. However, smartphones and tablets are doing the opposite and are reducing children’s “cognitive ability in measurable ways” (Molloy). In addition to that, smartphones are “linked to reduced social interaction, inadequate sleep, poor real-world navigation, and depression” (Molloy). So the purpose of this essay is to analyze the effects of smartphones on a person's cognitive abilities.

Review of Literature

According to Barr, Pennycook, Stolz, and Fugelsang (2015), the researchers stated that smartphones will lead to a person to have less analytic and intuitive thinking skills when given problems that require them to use their reasoning skills. The researchers conducted three studies in this research which proved that participants who have high level of usage on smartphones has low ability in heuristic thinking for the first study, following by the second study which includes, the study between higher amount of smartphone usage leading to having low reasoning skills of the participants as an alternative explanation. The third study includes the study of the association between the higher amount of smartphone usage leading to the lower academic performance of the participants. Evidence to support the assertion In the first study which studies the association between smartphone usage and heuristic thinking, results show that participants who have a high level of usage on smartphones scored lower on cognitive style questions. That is to say, smartphone usage for a long time can cause an increase in cognitive misers because participants tend to apply heuristic thinking when they use their smartphones.

The second study which studies the association between smartphone usage and reasoning skills show that participants who have a high level of usage on smartphones have a lower cognitive ability. Namely, smartphone usage as informational sources will cause users to lose the ability to do reasoning questions as according to the researchers, smartphone users offload thinking by relying on external information sources as smartphones are used with ease.

The third study which studies the association between smartphone usage and academic performance shows that there are no associations between smartphone use and the grade point average of the students. However, the researchers also stated that it may be because the grade point average scores were obtained by students’ self-reporting. Hence, future research should take precautions in detail on the measurements of the study (Barr et al., 2015). Alternative ways of interpreting the evidence with additional evidence In the first study, the contrasting results were the difference between the participants. The researchers differentiated the participants into smartphone users and non-smartphone users. However, the results showed that there were no differences between the difference. Hence, the researchers could differentiate the participants into males and females to evaluate their cognitive style instead. This is to study whether there will be a difference in cognitive style between different genders.

The additional evidence to this stance can be proved by Batool (2017) findings which stated that men can visualize more and women can verbalize more when it comes to their cognitive style. It was also found that verbalizer performs better on verbal task and visualizers perform better on visual tasks. In the second study, the researchers can differentiate the participants into a different level of ages. There might be a possibility that a different generation of people will have different cognitive ability as they have different backgrounds. For example, a participant in generation x can be compared to another participant in generation y due to their cognitive abilities. Richmond, Sargent, Flores, and Zacks (2018) found that older adults had more difficulty on tests of navigation than younger adults and the results were related to their cognitive ability.

In the third study, the researchers can consider the fact that some people might differ as they come from different backgrounds. For example, some participants can have better time management on their academic such as, some would make a schedule for their studies while some would not. The researchers can consider these participants background and their purpose of using smartphones as well. According to Lepp, Barkley, and Karpinski (2014), the researchers found out that university students who use cell phones and text messaging often distract them from school work because students will feel obligated to always be in touch with social media and text messaging.

Conclusion

In conclusion, smartphones can decrease people’s cognitive ability and affect their cognitive styles. However, people are different in the sense of their backgrounds, lifestyles and ages. For example, as most of the participants are students in this study, every student will have different ways to study and a different lifestyle to cope with their time to study. Hence, when using smartphones, some students might neglect their cognitive ability to search pieces of information online. But some students might be able to have more analytic skills in order to finish their assignments and not be affected by their smartphones. Because sometimes, smartphones do not show what will be required to answer a high order thinking skills question. This journal article has included many studies that are valid to measure the associations between cognitive styles and smartphone usage. However, it can be more detailed as it includes research on cognitive style and abilities of people. For example, a qualitative research will be needed for studies which include cognitive style and abilities. Future researchers can also explore different point of views when it comes to cognitive styles.

References:

1. Barr, N., Pennycook, G., Stolz, J. A., & Fugelsang, J. A. (2015). The brain in your pocket: evidence that smartphones are used to supplant thinking. Computers in Human Behavior, 473–480. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2015.02.029
2. Batool, I. (2017). Gender Differences in Verbalizing-visualizing and Wholistic-analytic cognitive styles. Pakistan Journal of Psychological Research (2), 449–464.
3. Blythman, J. (2018, August 07). Not just a fad: The surprising, gut-wrenching truth about gluten. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/aug/07/not-just-a-fad-the-surprising-gut-wrenching-truth-about-gluten