How Smartphones Hijack Our Minds By Nicholas Carr

865 Words2 Pages

Nicholas Carr wrote ‘How Smartphones Hijack Our Minds’ published in the Wall Street Journal in 2017. Carr believes that as the brain becomes reliant on smartphones the intellect diminishes. Smartphones have become an extension of one’s self, capturing memories, storing information, communicating an individual’s thoughts and feelings, setting reminders etc. It has become a necessity that many people feel they cannot live without. However, their usefulness comes with a price. A price Carr states and backs up with multiple studies researching the effect smartphones have on the brain and human interactions. Whether aware or not, people are distracted by the mere presence of their smartphones and it disrupts how they think and act. With just a …show more content…

All groups were administered the same test; however, one group had their phones on their desks, another had them tucked in their bags, and the third group had their phones placed in a separate room. Ward found that the closer the phone was, the worse the student performed on the test. When the study was retested, the results were the same and researcher discovered that students who relied most heavily on smartphones showed greater intellectual …show more content…

Instead of focusing on the conversations at hand, people are distracted by the conversations on their phones. Because of this divide in attention, conversations are not as deep and meaningful as they were before smartphones ‘hijacked’ our mind. Researchers at the University of Essex divided participants into pairs and had them talk to each other for 10 minutes with half the participants having a phone with them and the rest without one present. The study was conducted to test how the presence of phones affected affinity, empathy, and trust. The results of the study indicated that phones caused a decrease in empathy and understanding and prevented the participants from establishing a connection with their partners. Most people believe that the web will increase their intelligence and with a smartphone knowledge is at the tips of their fingers; however, this is not exactly true. Research suggests that easier access to information reduces mental

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