Digital technology is integrated into our lives—arguably, to a fault. On one hand, our ability to connect to others and access information at any given moment offers new opportunities for our work life, relationships, health, and more.
On the other hand, the long-term effects of being constantly “dialed in” to infinite information and technology haven’t been revealed yet. Dealing with constant stimuli has ushered in an unprecedented attention crisis that can also impact our jobs, relationships, and health in a negative way.
In fact, evidence suggests that simply having your smartphone near you can cause “brain drain,” drastically affecting your ability to concentrate on whatever task you’re trying to accomplish.
Why our brains have limited cognitive resources.
Our brain is only able to retain a certain amount of information at any particular moment—this is called our “cognitive capacity.” Different cognitive tasks require different amounts of our brain’s cognitive capacity.
Our cognitive abilities and restraints are determined by the availability of our attentional resources—such as working memory (i.e., the amount of information we can mentally hold at any given time) and fluid intelligence (i.e., the ability to solve new problems).
The thing is, attentional resources are limited, and using them for one cognitive task leaves fewer available for other tasks (and, in turn, reduces available cognitive capacity). Given the overwhelming abundance of information at our fingertips and our brains’ limited capacity to process that information, we need to be incredibly selective with how we’re allocating our attentional resources.
How smartphones are draining our brains ??
Say you’re sitting in front of your computer, putting together a presentation for your meeting later that week. This task obviously requires quite a bit of your cognitive capacity—you have to include data, provide analysis, and package it in an aesthetically pleasing way.
You’re determined to knock out this presentation as quickly as possible, so you have everything you need right on the screen in front of you (a blank powerpoint presentation, relevant spreadsheets, etc.).
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