Nancy Liu
Having your smartphone nearby takes a toll on your thinking
We all notice that almost everyone has a smartphone and they rely on the phone. I was wondering about why people have to use their phone and they cannot live without their cellphone. This article tells us the negative effects of having phone nearby all the time.
In the first paragraph, it always influences our experience. For example, “We take out our phones to take pictures in the middle of festive family meals, and send text messages or update our social profiles in the middle of a date or while watching a movie.” Even though we often hear the phrase “put your phone away” people still cannot live without their smartphones and smartphone influences their daily life.
There were 800 people in the research. In the study, people put their phone in different places results were surprising “people performance on both of these tasks is affected by individuals’ available mental resources” Therefore having cellphone nearby will influence people’s cognitive capacity which is “ This cognitive capacity is critical for helping us learn, reason, and develop creative ideas” I was confused about the results why people did not see the smartphone, but they were still distracted.
In the article, the author explained that “Research in cognitive psychology shows that humans learn to automatically pay attention to things that are habitually relevant to them, even when they are focused on a different task.” Actually, people have formed a habit of checking their phones even if the phone is not chirping. I realize that when tests are coming, I will put my cellphone aside and force myself do not look at them. In this way, I will concentrate more on my study. Because usually I would like to check the email or messages on the phone during my spare time, which would distract my attention from studying. Then I found that putting my smartphone away was a good way for me on focus on my study. At that time, I did not know why but I just like to do it. When we are that means that when we are successful at resisting the urge to attend to our smartphones.
As the passage mentions “ how do we resolve this tension between the costs and benefits of our smartphone? ” it is a question that truly worth for us to discuss about and also a question that has gradually become more and more popular in our society, just like the excuse , which been used many times by ourselves when we are trying to buy a new iPad or an iPhone. We promised to our parents the smartphone which is used for study purpose. But, actually it is not. Most people use their “study purpose” smartphone into the filed that is detrimental to themselves. Therefore, resolving the tension between the costs and benefits was urging to be discussed. In my perspective, people’s dependency of the smartphone were just like a kind of habits and unconscious mind that formed time after time. So, we might resolve this tension from the point of solving habits, which we could eliminate the bad habits of playing the game app in the smartphone and try to use the utility program more often. For example, we could try to make the time of using utility program longer and reward ourselves by our favorite items or even watching a short YouTube video, which is often used by myself after a long period of researching online without playing with the computer. Thus, we could form a habit and resolve the tension between the cost and benefits of our smartphone.
Additionally, while the article talks about the smartphone, the biggest issues that comes from the internet have not been mentioned yet. The reason why I say the topic of the internet was left over is because most drawbacks of the smartphone just come from the internet, since many people gain information from the internet and the accuracy of the internet is not really reliable. Therefore, the topic of the internet was more like an expansion topic of the smartphone. As people facing so much information in the internet, it will create problems to people, especially our teenagers in the developing stage. Because of the uncertainty of those massage from the internet, people would always be misled by those uncertainty information, which was harmful to their needs as they want an accurate information for any purpose and further created a negative effect on their demands. So the problem of the internet really should not be left over by the author, since it is an expansion topic of the smartphone.
All in all , it is really important for us to use the smartphone correctly.
