Constantly checking your mobile phone can lead to 'cognitive failures'
Whether sitting on a train or having dinner at a restaurant, many people find it hard to stop fiddling with their mobile phones – firing off a never-ending stream of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter posts.
Apps on one's phone can be distracting
If this online hyperactivity looks exhausting, it’s no surprise to discover that these high-frequency internet users find it much more difficult to pay attention to what’s going on around them than the rest of us – even when they are not consumed by the web.
Checking your mobile phone while driving is a huge distraction and is illegal in many countries
New research finds that the most frequent mobile phone and internet users are the most likely to be distracted, for example by being prone to missing important appointments and daydreaming while having a conversation.
In the first study of its kind, it has been found that the more times a person uses the internet or their mobile phone, the more likely they are to experience “cognitive failures”. These include a whole range of blunders, and a general lack of awareness of a person’s surroundings that stretches as far as people forgetting why they have just gone from one part of the house to the other.
The more times a person uses the internet or their mobile phone, the more likely they are to be distracted
The study draws the same conclusions among users of mobile phones without internet access as with it – suggesting that mobile phone conversations and surfing the web are similarly associated with distraction.
Click here to read about what happened to a woman who was busy chatting on her phone.
But whether the most digitally active people are more distracted because their excessive online activity makes them jittery or hyperactive, or whether it is the other way around – that they are more drawn to these activities because they naturally have short “attentional control” – is unclear at this stage.
The apps on smart devices that many users are "hooked" on and check constantly
Click here to read about the Google effect of stupidity.
(All images - credit: Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons licence)
