As the phone’s proximity increased, brainpower decreased. It was as if the smartphones had force fields that sapped their owners’ intelligence. In subsequent interviews, nearly all the students said that their phones hadn’t been a distraction—that they hadn’t even thought about the devices during the experiment. They remained oblivious even as the phones muddled their thinking. A follow-up experiment, with nearly 300 participants, produced similar results. It also revealed that the more heavily the students relied on their phones in their everyday lives, the greater the cognitive penalty they
...more
