Bad news for people who hope to solve their business day by leaving their phone in an office staircase: A new research indicates that you may still find something to distract your attention. According to researchers at the London College of Economics, the issue is not our electronic devices ourselves, but the way we use our tools mainly Renew our brains.
“In my research, I want to change the speech beyond discussions that focus on the device. The smartphone itself is not the problem”, “Maxi Heitmayer, the co -author of a study published on March 27 in Borders in computer scienceand He said in a statement. “This is what we do, frankly, the applications that generate and enhance these habits.”
To investigate these interconnected issues, Heitmayer and the collaborators requested 22 volunteers between the ages of 22 and 31 to spend two or five hours in a special sound -resistant room. They were also asked to bring their daily electronic devices, or at least laptop and phone. The team did not ask them to change the preferred notification settings on any device. Instead, they ordered the participants to put their phones on their office within one working day, then they left it on an office about five feet on the second day. Otherwise, volunteers were assigned to communicate with regular work responsibilities. Meanwhile, the researchers collected the frequency and long time when the participants stopped following something unrelated to working on their phones or computers.
The team’s data was clear: While the volunteers looked at their phones less on the day they put it away from them, they simply replaced them with the screen time on their computers. Regardless of the selection of the device, the average participants reached about 3.5 hours of work for about 1.3 hours of spare time.
“The problem is not rooted within the device itself, but in the customs and procedures we have developed with our devices,” ” Heitmayer argued.
The increasing evidence indicates that the nature that causes addiction and the field of applications and social media platforms can change the user’s nervous paths and affect its general well -being. Since studying the team helps in clarifying it, the repercussions go beyond when and the number of times we use in these devices – they are Why We use it. Haytamir said the result is “a very unequal battle that fought every day … when we use our phones.”
He said: “Things inside phones that make up the largest ponds are developed by large companies that benefit greatly from our failure to resist the temptation to use them.” “All this literally by design.”
Unfortunately, there is no single solution to the continuous distraction dilemma of our culture. On a personal level, people can try strategies such as tightening automatic procedures that are silent during specific periods during the day, with work also to be more aware of the extent of use of their devices. Heitmayer also believes that better regulation, application control and devices themselves are needed. This is especially important when it comes to younger users.
“These devices are incredibly useful and can facilitate learning and creativity, but they come at a cost of struggling with most adults to manage them, so we can not simply ignore this,” Heitmayer said.