“Digital amnesia should not be taken lightly. Yes, a
smartphone has become almost a necessity for anyone who lives in today’s
society and it’s an essential professional and personal tool for communication.
However, it is very important to limit ones dependency on it primarily because
of its addictive properties. The mind is a muscle and it if it’s not used for
the reasons it was made, it will become lazy”
Managing Director –
South Asia of Kaspersky Lab, Altaf Halde commenting on their study on
Smartphone addiction and Human cognition
Smartphone addiction, called Nomophobia, is very real.
But is Nomophobia, the phobia related to being without your
smartphone for extended periods of time, a real medical condition, comparable
to addiction? And is it causing humans to slowly lose their ability to remember
basic facts and reason logically?
It might be, but few studies have been done to even give
basic evidence of this in the wild. The reason is quite clear; Telecom
Providers, Telecom Equiptment maker an even OEM (Original Equiptment
manufactures) of smartphones are unwilling to support or fund studies that
suggest in any way that their products and services cause any addiction, as the
video below suggests.
So I was quite pleased to stumble across this very simple
study conducted by anti-virus company Kaspersky Lab that suggests smartphone
addiction is leading to Memory amnesia and reduced logical as reported in the
article “Smartphone
Addiction Causes Digital Amnesia: Kaspersky”, published August 21, 2015 by
Siddhant Ghatge, Trak.in.
The study was conducted with 1,007 adult smartphone users in
India to determine if they could remember basic information stored in their
smartphones e.g. spouse or children's phone numbers without looking in their
smartphone.
The results are shocking and indicate the degree of
smartphone dependency:
- 2 out of 10 could recall their child’s school’s contact number
- 7 out of 10 could recall their spouse’s phone numbers
- 1 in 3 could not recall the phone number for the house they'd lived in when aged 10
- 1 in 3 would use their smartphone to Google the answer for a question
The graph below illustrates the answers to the last survey
question even more dramatically.
So what does all this mean!? We’re merging with our
smartphones, like the Borg in Star Trek, Star Trek TNG Style!
Kaspersky Lab Smartphone
Dependency Study – Helps College Students but addictive to Adults
The study indicated that smartphone dependency was more
acute among Teenagers (ages 13 to 17) with Millennials (ages 18 to 28) being
next. Apparently, the younger the person polled and the earlier they were introduced
to smartphones, the more dependent they were on the smartphone to augment their
memory.
This implies logically that their dependence would grow with
time, albeit the sample size and the location of the participants meant that
the results may not be so easily replicated.
But it does fit with my personal experience, the main thing that
matters to me, as science is yet to even be able to catch up with this problem.
What I’ve observed at MICO
University College among the female population is that once you're using a
smartphone, with so many apps to distract you along with games, you'll find
your hours wasted away switching from app to app. You might even end up just
relying on one particular app, usually Social Media Apps such as Facebook
Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp or Twitter.
People have become so dependent on their smartphones, they
no longer remember basic facts even about their OWN lives.
Instead, they remember where to find the information i.e.
websites and Search Engines, rather than the information itself as noted in a
2011 Survey of 1 million students by StudyBlue as detailed in my Geezam blog article entitled “StudyBlue
reveals Smartphones, Tablets make you smarter – The Big Bang Theory on Google”.
This may be beneficial if you're in college but it's bad if you’re
not in College or University and don't already have the Research discipline in
place to discern fact from fiction online.
Plus with so many distractions your smartrphone, your device
is more to become a hindrance or crutch for your memory than a research tool,
as the Kaspersky Lab Survey indicates.
Google on your
smartphione - The Slow Death of Human Reasoning
Google makes it very easy to do basic research and find
articles or YouTube videos on any topic.
This is now especially easy as they're now ranking websites in
terms of their ease of viewing on a smartphone since April 2015 as reported in
my blog article
entitled “@Google
wants smartphone-friendly Websites - Pricier Sponsored Search Results Prices
for Small Business's Shopaholics”.
Microsoft owned Bing Search Engine has also being doing the
same thing as well as noted in “Bing
to follow Google in rewarding mobile-friendly websites”, published May 14,
2015 by Lance Whitney, CNET News and “Bing
Follows Google With Its Own “Mobile-Friendly” Ranking Algorithm Change”,
published May 14, 2015 by Sarah Perez, Techcrunch.
It's just simply the faster and is the easiest thing to do,
as we already purchased the smartphone and the corresponding Data Plan and it's
in your pocket. So why not use it to
answer every little query that comes to mind?
Alas, that's what this study suggests is happening, but this
dependence on the smartphone, Apps and the Search Engines such as Google is
slowly killing not only short term memory but logical reasoning by the brain.
Also, this dependency means whenever you have a question
that needs answering, you're more likely to draw for your smartphone. Depending
on whose study you believe, this translates to an improved organization and
prioritization of information, as you now know where to find it rather than remembering
the information itself.
When you’re not questioning the world around you, it keeps
you glued to that screen, ignoring the world around you instead of trying to
remember things or interacting with your fellow human beings.
But if screen time is killing off your memory, reasoning
ability and possibly human interaction, can it potentially be killing of your
sex life?
Smartphones vs Sex
- Why smartphones are bad for human relationships as AI sex partners coming
It's gotten so bad that some people have proclaimed that
they prefer smartphones over sex as reported in the article “Over
One-Third Indians Prefer Smartphones Over Sex: Survey”, published July 30,
2015 by Nikita Wable, Trak.in. Not surprisingly, the revelations in this
study have been known as far back as 2013, as this video demonstrates.
In a KRC Research survey of 7,000 globally, the results are
equally shocking:
1.
74% of Indians have slept with the smartphone in hand
2.
41% have used the device in washrooms
3.
22% of people globally would give up sex for their
smartphones
4.
35% of people in India would give up sex for their
smartphones
So what's the solution?
Take some serious away time form your smartphone as well as
follow my helpful tips to cure yourself of Nomophobia as laid out in my blog article
entitled “How
to deal with Smartphone Addiction – Trend towards Wearables indicates
Smartphone Addiction getting worse”.
Otherwise, we may be seeing the coming of AI (Artificial
Intelligence) in our lives as ideal sex partners, Humans Style.
After all, they're already set to replace Fast Food Workers
and chefs as pointed out in my blog article
entitled “US$15,000
Moley Robotics Cooking Robot – Cooking Robot seeking Taste for Human Food to
take over in 2017”.
Also, self-driving vehicles to carry cargo across America
have been developed and are in use by Freightliner, a sister company to
Mercedez-Benz as reported in my blog article
entitled “Freightliner
Inspiration Highway Pilot Trucks in Nevada – How in Sin City is testing
Self-Driving Trucks and Why Jamaica's perfect for off-Road Testing”.
Good to take a little time to interact with people and put
the smartphone aside. If it starts messing with your sex and relationships with
other humans, AI's in the future will begin to replace humans in relationships.
By then, Resistance will be futile, Star Trek TNG Style.
Here's the link:
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