Your Smartphone is Making You Stupid

Are you one of some 2 billion cell phone users, who talk, touch or swipe your cell phone 2,617 times a day? (Yes that often, according to research.)

If so, then you’re probably addicted.

Smartphones hook people by using the same neural pathways as gambling and drugs.
[shareable cite=”Connie Bennett, The Cravings Ninja™”] Watch out! Your smartphone can make you stupid.[/shareable]

So points out pathways as gambling and drugs, as Chris Marcellino, helped develop the iPhone’s push notifications at Apple.

In addition to being overly attached to your cell phone, do you feel compelled to check your Facebook updates repeatedly?

Here’s why you may find it hard to stop.

The world’s world most popular social media platform hooks you with spurts of dopamine, a complicated neurotransmitter, which gives your brain “rewards.” So admitted Sean Parker, ex-president of Facebook, to the Globe and Mail.

Indeed, as you may already have recognized, there’s a dark side to social media and dopamine, large amounts of which have been linked to anxiety, binge eating and lust.

To learn more about the manipulative tricks that hook you, watch this TED talk, “How a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every day,” given by Tristan Harris, former Google product manager.

Join the Conversation: Do you limit the amount of time you spend on your cell phone or on Facebook? What do you do?

At the risk of sounding like a hypocrite, I invite you now to share this alarming news on your favorite social media channels.

Special thanks to Morry Zelcovitch for alerting me to this Globe and Mail article.