Does Excessive Smartphone Usage Affect Studies?

With the advent of advanced technology, the growing use of mobile phones and other gadgets are considerably harming the younger generation. Students are forming a strong connection with their mobile phones, which is leading to a massive loss in their concentration and time spent in studies. Parents and teachers usually face problems in combating the distraction of students.

Anything available, accessible, new, fast, and related to information and technology tends to attract a lot of people. When students see everybody in their surroundings using cell phones, they adopt this as a natural phenomenon. It is the sheer presence that leads to immediate inclination towards technology. There are several ways how excessive smartphone usage affects your studies and reduces your productivity

Impact on Concentration  

Heavy internet and mobile phone users are prone to lack of concentration and forget things easily. This also affects their awareness and eventually leads to a passive mind. Moreover, this also leads to weak focus and attention that is most important for excelling in studies.

A study has proved that your cognitive capacity is significantly reduced when your smartphone is within reach. Experiments were conducted with nearly 800 smartphone users in an attempt to measure, for the first time, how well people can complete tasks when they have their smartphones nearby even when they’re not using them.

Students were asked to sit at a computer and take a series of tests that required full concentration to score well. The tests were geared to measure participants’ available cognitive capacity, that is, the brain’s ability to hold and process data at any given time. Before beginning, participants were randomly instructed to place their smartphones either on the desk face down, in their pocket or personal bag, or another room. All participants were instructed to turn their phones to silent.

The research found that participants with their phones in another room significantly outperformed those with their phones on the desk, and they also slightly outperformed those participants who had kept their phones in their bag. 

The findings suggest that the mere presence of one’s smartphone reduces available cognitive capacity and impairs cognitive functioning, even though people feel they’re giving their full attention and focus to the task at hand.

The researchers found that participants who were the most dependent on their smartphones performed worse compared with their less-dependent peers when they kept their smartphones on the desk or in their pocket or bag. 

Having a smartphone within sight or easy reach reduces a person’s ability to focus and perform tasks because part of their brain is actively working to not pick up or use the phone. It’s not that participants were distracted because they were getting notifications on their phones, the mere presence of their smartphone was enough to reduce their cognitive capacity.

Increasing Stress

Having a cell phone tempts you to spend all day talking or texting instead of doing fruitful things. Studies have proven that teens who spend too much of their time with their cell phones are more prone to stress, anxiety, and depression. Research has also found that excessive smartphone usage may result in an increased risk of mental health problems. Stress directly affects your academic performance in a certain way.

Teen Tendonitis

Excess messaging can lead to Teen Tendonitis. It causes pain in the hands, back, and neck due to poor posture. Excessive cell phone usage is known to result in musculoskeletal disorders such as tendonitis and first carpometacarpal arthritis in the forearm and thumb. All these physical problems caused by excessive smartphone usage will have an extremely negative impact on your studies, hence the usage of cell phones should be minimized.

Lack of sleep

Many people have a tough time putting down their cell phones before bed, when your Twitter interactions are going crazy, taking one more look is hard to resist. Unfortunately, several studies have revealed that using LCD screens that are too close to your face can upset your natural sleep cycle and you’ll wake up tired the next day.

The blue light that they give off has been theorized to inhibit the production of melatonin, the hormone that induces sleep. Our eyes are habitual to absorbing blue light from the sun in daylight hours, so when we get it at night it disturbs the rhythms that spur us to rest at night and wake in the morning.

Mobile phone makers have caught on, which is why iPhone and Android phones now have blue light filters, while apps are adopting dark modes to turn your device into something a little more pleasing on the eyes. Many of these tools can even be scheduled to automatically change with the time of day so that you can have a peaceful sleep which will result in you concentrating on studies in a better way.