So you wanna know why people are addicted to their phones? Well it has to do with the way habits are formed in the brain. That device you are staring at has just as must addictive power as heroin and for some people the withdrawals are even the same!
Now don’t think I’m preaching from my high horse, I’m not. I’m just as guilty as the rest of you but I have actually researched why it’s so hard for people to put down the phones.
The first thing to know is that your smart phones are actually rewiring your brain in many many different ways. Think about what it does to your critical thinking to have the supposed answer to whatever question you have right at your fingertips. And, with instant access to so many pages of people saying the same thing on whatever topic you happen to be searching for, and your critical reasoning goes right out the fackin’ window. After all if you see 18 pages all saying similar things then that must be the truth.
The other thing is that the screen is replacing your internal visual processes. Your ability to actually create and hold pictures in your head weakens and in fact you develop a type of ADHD where you just go from one thing to another. This is one of the main reasons why smartphones are so addictive.
The thing that makes smartphones so much worse than just logging onto the internet and surfing is because of the ease of access and the way you access the internet with your phone. There is a little bit of a buffer to the addictive-ness of the internet from a desktop because of the fact that you have to sit down, turn on the computer and then surf. Sure most of the time it’s just moving the mouse and the screen comes on but you still have to sit down and you can’t take the screen with you.
With the smartphones this ain’t so. You take it out of your pocket wherever you are at, click a button or tap the screen and now you are surfing. You are swiping the pages and your brain is getting tons of visual information second after second. This is the dangerous part. Read more
