When Smartphones Get Smarter, Do We Get Dumber?

A study found that simply having a smartphone nearby reduced the mind’s ability to access and process information—even if the phone was off or placed in a bag.

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When Smartphones Get Smarter, Do We Get Dumber? — Illustration by The Epoch Times, Freepik, Getty Images

August 26, 2024Updated:August 27, 2024

As Mohamed Elmasry, emeritus professor of computer engineering at the University of Waterloo, watched his 11- and 10-year-old grandchildren tapping away on their smartphones, he posed a simple question: “What’s one-third of nine?”

Instead of taking a moment to think, they immediately opened their calculator apps, he wrote in his book “iMind Artificial and Real Intelligence.”

Later, fresh from a family vacation in Cuba, he asked them to name the island’s capital. Once again, their fingers flew to their devices, Googling the answer rather than recalling their recent experience.

With 60 percent of the global population—and 97 percent of those younger than 30—using smartphones, technology has inadvertently become an extension of our thinking process.

However, everything comes at a cost. Cognitive outsourcing, which involves relying on external systems to collect or process information, may increase one’s risk of cognitive decline.

Habitual GPS (global positioning system) use, for example, has been linked to a significant decrease in spatial memory, reducing one’s ability to navigate independently. As AI applications such as ChatGPT become a household norm—with 55 percent of Americans reporting regular AI use—recent studies found that it is resulting in impaired critical thinking skills, dependency, loss of decision-making, and laziness.

Experts emphasize cultivating and prioritizing innate human skills that technology cannot replicate.

Neglected Real Intelligence

Referring to his grandkids and their overreliance on technology, Elmasry explained that they are far from “stupid.”

The problem is that they are not using their real intelligence.

They—and the rest of their generation—have grown accustomed to using apps and digital devices—unconsciously defaulting to internet search engines such as Google rather than thinking something through.

Just as physical muscles atrophy without use, so too do our cognitive abilities weaken when we let technology think for us.

A telling case is now called the “Google effect,” or digital amnesia, as shown in a 2011 study from Columbia University.

The current generation has grown accustomed to using apps and digital devices. hughhan/unsplash, Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

Betsy Sparrow and colleagues at Columbia found that individuals tend to easily forget information that is readily available on the internet.

Their findings show that people are more likely to remember things they think are not available online. They are also better at recalling where to find information on the internet than recalling the information itself.

A 2021 study further tested the effects of Googling and found that participants who relied on search engines such as Google performed worse on learning assessments and memory recall than those who did not search online.

The study also shows that Googlers often had higher confidence that they had “mastered” the study material, indicating an overestimation in learning and ignorance of their learning deficit. Their overconfidence might be the result of having an “illusion of knowledge” bias—accessing information through search engines creates a false sense of personal expertise and diminishes people’s effort to learn.

Overreliance on technology is part of the problem, but having it around may be just as harmful. A study published in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research discovered that “the mere presence” of a smartphone reduced “available cognitive capacity”—even if the phone was off or placed in a bag.

The Epoch Times

This “brain drain” effect likely occurs because the presence of a smartphone taps into our cognitive resources, subtly allocating our attention and making it harder to concentrate fully on the task at hand, researchers say. Not only does excessive tech use impair our cognition, but also, clinicians and researchers have noticed that it is linked to impaired social intelligence—the innate aspects that make us human.

Becoming Machine-Like

In the United States, children ages 8 to 12 typically spend four to six hours per day looking at screens, while teenagers may spend up to nine hours daily looking at screens. Further, 44 percent of teenagers feel anxious, and 39 percent feel lonely without their phones.

Excessive screen time reduces social interactions and emotional intelligence and has been linked to autistic-like symptoms, with longer durations of screen use correlated with more severe symptoms.

Dr. Jason Liu, a medical doctor who also has a doctorate in neuroscience, is a research scientist and founding president of the Mind-Body Science Institute International. Liu told The Epoch Times that he is particularly concerned about children’s use of digital media.

He said he has observed irregularities in his young patients who spend excessive time in the digital world—noticing their mechanical speech, lack of emotional expression, poor eye contact, and difficulty forming genuine human connections. Many exhibit attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms, responding with detachment and struggling with emotional fragility.

“We should not let technology replace our human nature,” Liu said.

Corroborating Liu’s observations, a JAMA study followed about 3,000 adolescents with no prior ADHD symptoms over 24 months and found that a higher frequency of modern digital media use was associated with significantly higher odds of developing ADHD symptoms.

The Epoch Times

As early as 1988, scientists introduced the concept of the “Internet Paradox,” which is that the internet, despite being a “social tool,” leads to antisocial behavior.

Observing 73 households during their first years online, researchers noted that increased internet use was associated with reduced communication with family members, smaller social circles, and heightened depression and loneliness.

However, a three-year follow-up found that most of the adverse effects dissipated. The researcher explained this through a “rich get richer” model; introverts experienced more negative effects from the internet, while extroverts, with stronger social networks, benefited more and became more engaged in online communities, mitigating negative effects.

Manuel Garcia-Garcia, global lead of neuroscience at Ipsos, who holds a doctorate in neuroscience, told The Epoch Times that human-to-human connections are vital for building deeper connections and that while digital communication tools facilitate connectivity, they can lead to superficial interactions and impede social cues.

Supporting Liu’s observation of patients becoming “machine-like,” a Facebook emotional contagion experiment, conducted on nearly 700,000 users, manipulated news feeds to show more positive or negative posts. Users exposed to more positive content posted more positive updates, while those seeing more negative content posted more negative updates.

This demonstrated that technology can nudge human behavior in subtle yet systematic ways. This nudging, according to experts, can make our actions and emotions predictable, similar to programmed responses.

The Eureka Moment

“Sitting on your shoulders is the most complicated object in the known universe,” theoretical physicist Michio Kaku said.

While the most advanced technologies, including AI, may appear sophisticated, they are incommensurate with the human mind.

“AI is very smart, but not really,” Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, professor of psychology at Temple University and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told The Epoch Times. “It’s a machine algorithm that’s really good at predicting the next word. Full stop.”

The human brain is constructed developmentally, and it’s “not just given to us like a computer is in a box,” Hirsh-Pasek said. Our environment and experiences shape the intricate web of neural connections, 100 billion neurons interconnected by 100 trillion synapses.

Human learning thrives on meaning, emotion, and social interaction. Hirsh-Pasek noted that computer systems such as AI are indifferent to these elements. Machines only “learn” with the data they are fed, optimizing for the best possible output.

A cornerstone of human intelligence is the ability to learn through our senses, Jessica Russo, a clinical psychologist, told The Epoch Times. When we interact with our environment, we process a large amount of data from what we see, hear, taste, and touch.

AI systems cannot go beyond the information they have been given, and they, therefore, cannot truly produce anything new, Hirsh-Pasek said.

“[AI] is an exquisitely good synthesizer. It’s not an exquisitely good thinker,” she said.

The Epoch Times

AI lacks the intuitive capabilities of humans to truly understand the depth and authenticity of emotions, Dr. Sai Zuo, a psychiatrist in medical anthropology and social medicine, told The Epoch Times.

She said that certain aspects of human intelligence transcend scientists’ current understanding, suggesting that concepts such as inspiration originate from “a higher level of the universe.”

Many moments of inspiration have yielded breakthroughs in science development. While taking a bath, the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes realized that the volume of an object could be determined by the amount of water it displaces, leading him to shout “Eureka!”—a discovery that established the principle of buoyancy. While taking a break, Albert Einstein imagined an experiment involving two lightning bolts, which led to the theory of special relativity.

Modern entertainment and technology, however, obstruct the generation of new ideas by reducing creativity.

For example, in our continually stimulated world, there is no space or time for boredom. However, boredom increases creativity and allows one to think of novel solutions.

Fortunately, there are effective ways to counteract technology’s negative influences and nourish our innate human capabilities.

Regaining Human Intelligence

Experts suggest that screen fasting, during which technology is removed, can help cultivate more focused lives.

A study showed that sixth graders who spent five days at a nature camp without technology demonstrated significant improvements in nonverbal emotional cues, such as reading facial emotions, compared with their peers who did not go.

Even setting reasonable limits can mitigate the adverse effects.

Young adults whose social media use was limited to 30 minutes a day for two weeks experienced lowered smartphone addiction and improved sleep, life satisfaction, stress, and relationships. According to Hirsh-Pasek, the key is balance.

Additionally, recent research found that simple interventions such as disabling nonessential notifications, keeping the phone on silent, disabling Touch ID and Face ID, hiding social media apps, and changing the phone to grayscale help lower screen time.

If a digital detox is unfeasible, research shows there are other ways to help.

Sleep

Getting a good night’s sleep is essential for learning and memory consolidation. Even one night of sleep deficit can significantly impair the ability to commit things to memory.

Our brains engage in a vital cleaning process during sleep. Neurotoxic waste products accumulate throughout the day and are flushed out, contributing to the healthy function of brain cells.

Spirituality

Modern digital technology is synonymous with endless stimulation, separating us from important aspects of life, such as a peaceful mind.

“There’s really not much room to be spiritual when we’re so busy doing,” Russo said.

She noted that this culture is saddled with distractions—incessant emails, notifications, and news alerts. This causes our bodies to drown in dopamine.

This constant stimulation keeps us locked in a heightened stress response, the “fight or flight” response, flooding our systems with cortisol and adrenaline. Over time, this exhausts our minds and bodies, hindering our capacity for deeper thought and connection.

Spirituality, Russo said, is about rediscovering the meaning of “spirit”—derived from spiritus, the Latin word for “breath.” It’s about slowing down, taking a deep breath, and being fully present in each moment.

Spiritual practices encourage meaningful connections, including empathy and emotional intelligence.

They can also enhance cognitive abilities such as creativity, attention, meaning-making, and purpose. These practices engage our minds in ways that differ from and potentially complement the information retrieval common in our techno-centric world.

The Choice Before Us

We are standing at a precipice of technological advancement, according to Hirsh-Pasek, with things such as AI and the metaverse advancing daily. The challenge and the opportunity lie in ensuring that technology enhances rather than diminishes our humanity.

Technology can grant huge benefits, and in the future, “there will be many, many wonderful things,” Hirsh-Pasek said.

However, she said: “The human species [has] a social brain—that is who we are. The more we chip away at that social nature of humanity, the more we chip away at our possibilities as a species.”

Liu warns against placing blind faith in digital technology, including AI.

“We only know part of the universe’s unlimited intelligence,” he said, and an overreliance on digital technology risks limiting our pursuit of more profound, unexplainable, and inspired knowledge.

Humans possess a unique spirit, soul, morality, and heart that connect us to the divine. Overdependence on technology threatens to atrophy these aspects of our being, he said.

Moreover, Liu noted that if human morals are lost, we will inadvertently teach AI to do bad things and use technology for wrongdoing.

“Above all, the most important thing is for human beings to focus on their own cultivation—the improvement of [their] human nature,” he said.

This includes cultivating “human love, compassion, understanding of each other, and forgiveness.”

Liu said he believes that these values are humanity’s true strength and the keys to unlocking a future in which technology serves, rather than controls, our destiny. The choice, as always, is ours.