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.
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.”
