Ways Technology Makes You Stupid

1. Studies have shown that blueenriched light, which is emitted by gadgets like smartphones, tablets and laptops, can suppress the bodys release of melatonin at night. Melatonin is a key hormone that helps regulate your internal clock, telling your body when it is nighttime and when to feel sleepy. Blue light can disrupt that process, making it impossible for you to stick to a proper sleep schedule. Losing sleep has a number of negative effects on .....

Youre easily distracted

2. You dont really need science to know this, but technology makes it much easier to get distracted, whether thats stepping away from an important project to check your smartphone or flipping between multiple browser tabs without really focusing on any one. It has been proven that toggling between multiple tasks at once doesnt actually work in fact, you just wind upperforming all your dutieseven worse.Teens in particular are more distracted than eve .....

You cant remember much

3. Technologys tendency to butt into whatever else youre doing makes it more difficult to form new memories. As Nicholas Carr explains in The Shallows, memory comes in two types: transient working memory and longterm memory, which is more permanent. Information needs to pass from working memory into longterm memory in order to be stored. Any break in the processes of working memory like, say, stopping to check your email or send a text message in th .....

so youre relying on the Internet to remember things for you

4. People used to be able to retain really vast quantities of knowledge like reciting entire novels, word for word but technology has eliminated both the need and the drive to do so. When you know that Google or your smartphone can retain a piece of information for you, youre less likely to store it in memory, studies have shown. Scientific American last year likened the Internet to an external hard drive for our brains, as we outsource an increasin .....

And youre much more forgetful than you used to be

5. Millennials are actually more likely to forget what day it is or where they put their keys than people over the age of 55, according to a 2013 Trending Machine survey. In a press release for the survey, family and occupational therapist Patricia Gutentag called out technology as one of the main culprits: This is a population that has grown up multitasking using technology, often compounded by lack of sleep, all of which results in high levels of .....

You cant concentrate on what youre reading

6. Even if youve shunned all distractions, you still wont absorb information you read online as well as you would if youd read it in a book. And you can blame hypertext for that. Those colorful little links scattered throughout online articles (including this one) make your brain work harder than it would otherwise, leaving less brain power to process what youre reading. Even just reading on screens, like a laptop or iPad links or no links has been .....

You cant find your way around without GPS

7. People who rely on GPS to get around have less activity in the hippocampus, an area of the brain involved in both memory and navigation, according to a series of studies presented in 2010. Using spatial memory which involves using visual cues to develop "cognitive maps" that remember routes instead of operating on GPSinduced autopilot can help avert memory problems later in life, the studies found. A 2008 study from the University of London even .....

You have the brain of a drug addict

8. No, Internet addiction isnt just some BS term parents throw around to terrify youngsters who spend too much time playing Candy Crush. Spending too much time on the Internet can actually cause changes in the brain that mimic those caused by drug and alcohol dependence, according to a 2012 study. Internet addicts most notably gamers who shun food, school and sleep to play for days on end have abnormal white and grey matter in their brains, which d .....