Ok, let me just start this post by making it clear I LOVE my cell phone.  It keeps me connected to my daughter at college and I can send quick messages to people I care about without bothering them.  It frees me up physically and psychologically because I know that my interns from work or my mother’s caregiver can get a hold of me wherever I am, when needed.  I see how it opens up our social worlds and puts information at our fingertips (I never have to buy a map and I always know when my favorite Pottery Barn item is on sale).  But like most of us, I tend to think I ‘m not one of “those people” when it comes to being addicted to my phone.  But I came across a study this week that made me stop and think about the effect of my cell phone.  What really caught my attention was the fact that we are impacted not just when we use our phone, but just by its mere presence,  that I thought was worth sharing and reflecting on in this week’s post.

Having a smartphone nearby, even when turned off, reduces our ability to think and reason, new research from the University of Texas, Austin, concludes.  A team of investigators conducted two studies in which 800 people engaged in tasks with their smartphones placed either nearby and in sight (face down on the table), nearby but out of sight (in their pocket or a bag), or in a separate room.  The researchers found the mere presence of the phone reduced performance, even though the people involved reported they were not thinking about their phone.  As smart phone salience increased, the performance on tests of cognitive capacity decreased.  The interesting thing was that when asked about the frequency of thinking about the phone, the average self report for all groups was “not at all.”  

The researchers then repeated the experimental situation, adding a group for each condition where the phone was actually turned off – the phone was off but in sight, turned off and out of sight, or turned off and in another room.  The results were the same, supporting the linear trend that as your smart phone becomes more noticeable , your available cognitive capacity decreases.  Interestingly, the participants who reported the highest dependence on their smart phone benefitted the most in terms of performance by leaving their phone in another room.

In reflecting on the study, the lead researcher, Dr. Adrian Ward, suggests, “Your conscious mind isn’t thinking about your smart phone, but that process – the process of requiring yourself not to think about something – uses up some of your limited cognitive resources.  It’s a brain drain.”  Professor Larry Rosen, of California State University, author of The Distracted Mind, has also researched the effects of merely having your smart phone nearby, and concludes, “People feel compelled to check their phones.  Even if the phone does not vibrate or they do not get notifications.”  His research confirms that this checking behavior increases anxiety and creates difficulties in processing information.  If you are interrupting your train of thought, it is going to be much  harder to absorb information or think deeply.

So for me, in thinking about my phone habits, I must confess I often have my phone sitting on my desk, and what the research suggests does ring true.  I do tend to check it, each time thinking it is just a brief, harmless pause.  But what I also wonder about is the many times I’m sitting with people I care about at home or in a coffee shop, and my phone is out on the table or in a bag by my side.  What is this doing to our intimacy and our ability to truly listen and understand each other?  It’s so annoying when you see someone’s eyes glance over to their phone or they pick it up to “multitask” while you are talking.   I realize in thinking about this research, that not only is it rude, but that the phone between us is much more than just a phone between us.  Next time, in order to be the kind of friend I want to be, I might just need to leave it in the car.