By Zarna
I strongly believe that smartphones are making us dumber. Many researchers have concluded that smartphones cause damage to our cognitive abilities, social skills, mental health, etc. All the information in this world about anything or anybody can be accessed with just a few taps and clicks, which might seem to be all nice and easy, but what we fail to realize is that we are increasingly growing dependent on smartphones. A lot of us have developed an unknowing obsession with our smartphones. An average person checks their phone about 80 to 150 times which is a lot. We set reminders to do our assignments or for birthdays or even meeting someone, and these are all basic activities which we are supposed to remember but because of our phones doing everything for us, our memory starts fading away and we stop caring about it because of course, we have our devices. Studies have shown that we retain about 10% to 30% less information through our smartphones than we do from hard copies because while doing an activity online, we frequently get interrupted by notifications which interrupts our train of thought, decreasing our efficiency. Our phones also mess up our sense of direction. Thanks to Google Maps we can easily navigate our way through wherever if we have sufficient internet services, but yet again, we are not always going to have enough wi-fi or data to find our way to the destination, and as mentioned earlier, it weakens our sense of direction. Do you know how it's said that we have to keep exercising our muscles regularly to keep them? The same goes for our brain. We have to keep exercising our brains instead of reaching out to our smartphones for minor inconveniences. The easy access to everything stops us from brainstorming which is extremely important for one's development. Maybe going to look for a word in the dictionary would help us more than looking it up online. Smartphones also enfeeble our ability to communicate which further leads to low self-esteem and struggles to resolve conflicts, and we tend to get exhausted and stressed easily. Studies have also shown that being exposed to the blue and white light (and radiations) emitted by smartphones for long durations and/ or right before going to sleep causes sleeping disorders which can lead to a reduction in concentration and deceleration in your daily activities/decreases your productivity. Our dependence on smartphones is alarming. As if the reminders for our work or any other occasions weren't enough, we even have water alarms! We need to be reminded to drink water, something our body cannot function without. Maybe going to a restaurant and finding out how the food is would make us less anti-social. Maybe looking at the roads and the landmarks would familiarize us with the route to our friend's house instead of looking up the location every single time. Maybe we can dial a number or at least search for it in our contacts instead of asking Siri or Bixby to do it. And maybe we can walk to the kitchen and get some water by ourselves without any technological assistance.
By Zarna
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