Smart Phone, Dumber You?

 It’s the first thing you grab when you wake up and the last thing you touch at night (even after bae). You reach for it countless times in between and panic if you leave it at home. ‘You can become psychologically addicted to almost anything – especially your phone,’ says neuroscientist Earl Miller...

- Earl Miller

A smartphone is basically a mini dopamine factory, rolling out hits of the feel-good brain chemical as a reward when you get Likes on social media or relieve boredom by scrolling through Twitter. Unfortunately, ‘the dopamine system is not satiable, so you continue to crave more and more,’ says clinical psychologist Elyssa Barbash.

That’s why the average person ends up reaching for their phone 80 times a day. And chances are, you don’t love it. More than half of people between ages 18 and 24, are seeking relief from social media, according to a recent report.

Getting some distance is essential because new research suggests that small-screen obsessions are a major brain drain. Being attached to your phone (even if you’re not looking at it) can impair mental functions, sapping your working memory and your ability to perform tasks, according to a 2017 study. ‘Resisting your phone’s pull takes up cognitive resources,’ explains study co-author Adrian Ward. Instead of focusing, ‘we’re constantly in this state of attention between what is happening in the moment and everything that could be happening, because that is what our phone represents.’