You might not think of this often, but even when cellphones are very important to make our lives easier, they could have some effects on our brains. It is important to understand how these devices can affect our body’s most important organ in order to know how to use them better. In this article, we will talk about 5 ways our brain is affected by the cellphones.
1- IT CAN MAKE US ADDICTED TO IT
Our Phones have become a complex part of our lives. Regions in the brain that scientists call gray matter showed changes in size and shape for people dependent on social media. In fact, the gray matter controls a person's emotions, language, vision, hearing, memory, and self-control accordingly. Our mobile can affects the brain’s frontal lobe and brainstem functions, resulting in decreased ability to speak, reason and comprehend social cues. Furthermore, researchers found that an imbalance in the chemicals found in the brain can trigger anxiety and depression.
2- IT CAN MAKE US LESS FOCUSED
The presence of smartphone alerts is disrupting our already weak ability to focus on the task at hand and could damage your memory. Nowadays you don’t have to remember dates, important appointments, and meetings as you simply rely on your phone’s apps to remind you of what you need to accomplish each day. Smartphones can put a drain on our cognitive capacity, thereby reducing our ability to complete tasks at hand, even if we are not using them during the accomplishment of the task. We have the ability to only pay attention to a small amount of information at a time, and our brains learn which information it needs to watch for. By always having a portion of our minds tuned into our smartphones, our ability to fully focus on, and enjoy, the task is reduced.
3- YOUR SLEEPING CYCLE IS AFFECTED
Smartphones can mess with your sleep. Smartphones and other electronic devices have long affected the quality of sleep of their users. It seems to be having an impact on how well we sleep as it will suppress your melatonin secretion when you need it the most, it will make you more alert when it is time to wind down than finally, you will feel more tired and less alert when you wake up.
4- USING A SMARTPHONE CAN IMPAIR OUR SOCIAL INTERACTIONS
The use of smartphones can impact your mood especially when you are surrounded by people. It can interrupt your attention from the people around you as well as your surroundings. It decreases your cognitive ability to socializing in and connecting with other people. This can lead to making you lonelier in the future.
5- SMARTPHONES MAKE YOU LESS SMART
As we mentioned before, sleeping less is one of the side effects of using your phone which can result in a lower IQ. In fact under sleeping for a long time can lead to losing 15 points of IQ loss, which may drop us into a lower category of mental ability.
