Is Your Smartphone Damaging Your Memory?

Smartphones and iPads destroy our memories, a new study in the US has claimed.

16:25 11 May 2016

Smartphone and iPads change how the human brain works and shorten attention spans, a new US study has warned. It said that multi-media devices make users focus on a few concrete details rather than the big picture. Seeing the big picture, according to the researchers, is crucial as it involves creativity, flexible reasoning and logical problem solving.

 

Professor Geoff Kaufman, of Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania, said: "There has been a great deal of research on how digital platforms might be affecting attention, distractibility and mindfulness and these studies build on this work by focusing on a relatively understudied construct.

 

"Given psychologists have shown construal levels can vastly impact outcomes such as self-esteem and goal pursuit it's crucial to recognise the role digitisation of information might be having on this important aspect of cognition."

 

In their study, the researchers recruited 300 participants to determine if they are better at comprehension and problem solving when they read information on print-outs rather than digital platforms. The results suggest that those given print-outs were much better at understanding the whole materials while those using computers remembered particular details.