Auto-complete :
Frequent users of smartphones quickly get used to the ―auto-complete‖ function of their devices—the way they need only type a few letters and the phone fills in the rest. Maybe too used to it, in fact. This handy function seems to make adolescent users faster, but less accurate, when responding to a battery of cognitive tests, according to research published in 2009 in the journal Bioelectromagnetics.
Texting :
A study led by researchers at the University of Coventry in Britain surveyed a group of eight- to twelve-yearolds about their texting habits, then asked them to write a sample text in the lab. The scientists found that kids who sent three or more text messages a day had significantly lower scores on literacy tests than children who sent none. But those children who, when asked to write a text message, showed greater use of text
abbreviations (like ―c u l8r‖ for ―see you later‖) tended to score higher on a measure of verbal reasoning
ability—likely because the condensed language of texting requires an awareness of how sounds relate to
written English.
Search engines :
The ready availability of search engines is changing the way we use our memories, reported psychologist
Betsy Sparrow of Columbia University in a study published in Science last year. When people expect to have future access to information, Sparrow wrote, ―they have lower rates of recall of the information itself and enhanced recall instead for where to access it.‖ It’s good to know where to find the information you need—but decades of cognitive science research shows that skills like critical thinking and problem-solving can be developed only in the context of factual knowledge. In other words, you’ve got to have knowledge stored in your head, not just in your computer.
Email :
Email is a convenient way to communicate, but trying to answer messages while also completing other work
makes us measurably less intelligent. Glenn Wilson, psychiatrist at King’s College London University,
monitored employees over the course of a workday and found that those who divided their attention between email and other tasks experienced a 10-point decline in IQ. Their decrease in intellectual ability was as great as if they’d missed a whole night’s sleep, and twice as great as if they’d been smoking marijuana.
So does technology make us stupid, or smart? The answer is “both,” and the choice is up to us.
