Analysis Of Ron Friedman´s Is Your Smartphone Making You Dumb?

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Technology has been steadily growing in the past few decades and has largely been put into good use by well-known entrepreneurs such as Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, as well as Bill Gates. Smartphones are an example of advancement in technology and this could be seen through its evolution from the once bulky mobile phones operated in the eighties to the touch screen phones that are now considered a norm among the society. However, Ron Friedman, in his article, “Is Your Smartphone Making You Dumb?”, mentioned that the mere presence of a cell phone has the power to interfere with complex cognitive activities. According to Friedman (2015), the experiments carried out had overall similar results: the presence of cell phones, whether in use or not, …show more content…

When this happens, most students would shift their priorities towards opening up the notifications, instead of focusing on the task at hand, which is to concentrate on the lecture. One who is concurrently reading and replying to a text during lectures will fail to absorb what is being taught as their attention is diverted by their smartphones (Grinols & Rajesh, 2014). They might think that they are being productive by multitasking but in reality, their brain is actually functioning inefficiently. This might be one of the reasons why many students of the present generation have been experiencing deterioration in test scores. Thus, it can be affirmed that smartphones are gradually causing individuals to become dumb as it weakens performance when one is …show more content…

In this regard, the presence of smartphones is potentially harmful as many people often use applications such as WhatsApp or Viber to communicate virtually instead of face-to-face. Nowadays, it is not uncommon to find families, or even couples, sitting together at the dinner table with complete silence surrounding them as they are too engrossed with their respective smartphones in hand. According to Turkle (2011), people are only increasing their connections in the superficial sense as they are getting closer to mobile devices and further apart from human beings. Although they are keeping in touch with friends through their smartphones, stronger bonds that are fostered through direct communications will cease. Hence, interpersonal relationships will be hindered as many people can’t afford to put away their smartphones just for a few minutes. In addition, present relationships may also weaken as people are neither motivated nor interested in maintaining the intimacy between their loved

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