Many are familiar with this: Here is a picture of like, a Tweet, discontinuation, and, Oh Yes, the Mails you want to be checked just once. The work focuses mostly in the Background. Why? We are distracted.
Currently, scientists around the world for the use of smartphones and the brain. You want to know, which traces the constant presence of Smartphones in the heads, leaves, and whether there are deformed, Twitter – and Facebook-brains at all.
Social networks have in the lives of many young people is of great importance. Some of you even take your sleep. In the UK, the health organization, Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) published a Report on social networks and the health of young people. According to the study, one out of five young people controlled at night its networks.
In addition, the Smartphone affect the performance, such as the American psychologist Adrian F. Ward found out. Alone in the vicinity of the own Smartphones enough in experiments, people sections in test questions poor. The device was in another room, able to answer the subjects more questions correctly. Ward concludes that a nearby mobile phone is increasing, especially the working memory in the hardware that it provides less in other fields.
Eyes react to the noise
“Basically, we know little about how digital media are changing the brain and its activity,” says Nicole Wetzel, a Professor at the Leibniz-Institute for neurobiology in Magdeburg. She and her team of researchers investigate how children respond to the ringing of a smartphone.
In the focus brains and eyes of children. Because the pupils react not only to light, but also on cognitive processes. “When we hear something Surprising, dilate our pupils,” explains the researcher. Ringing in between a cell phone that can detect the researchers with your Eye-trackers that someone is distracted from their actual goal.
Hoods with electrodes on the head to draw in the tests at the same time, which areas of the brain that respond when a stimulus arrives. Certain patterns allow to draw the researchers to draw conclusions on how distracted someone is. The result: “If a noise is played, the children usually slower or make more mistakes.”
For Ulrike Cress, Director of the Leibniz-Institute in Tübingen, the use of digital media is neither good nor evil. At the Institute scientists, such as computers, Tablets, and Internet explore can the Learning and Teaching improve. Be read, other than to See and Speak, not biologically innate but must be learned. Fully people bring maximum benefits.
Reading stress instead of pleasure reading
In trials, the test subjects, Wikipedia should use similar texts, the Links included for more click to Learn. For comparison, the test, people were offered then texts without links. The result: on the left is distracting. “If you look at the same word, if it is marked as a Link, is the pupil measurably greater”, summarises the working group leader Peter Gerjets the result.
The Exciting: from steering to the left even if they are not clicked on, more reported the Jets. Also, if the test subjects concentrated instead on your learning target, the performance is worse. The explanation: The Link can trigger a pulse in the head to jump to the request on the new page. The brain to suppress must. This is a burden on the working memory.
However, Twitter – or Facebook-for-brains?
According to Mayranne Wolf “flits” to read on the screen rather than the Text to find key words. The Rest of the flight plan. This superficial scanning was created for speed. Correctly in the Text, they could immerse themselves more on paper, the cognitive and literary scholar from Los Angeles, specializes in the differences when reading on paper and screen.
Wolf warns that the brain could get used to the new digital reading habits overall, to think flat and impatient. She sees the danger that people lose part of their ability for the analysis of complex issues.
Nevertheless, it is not advisable to allow children with learning Apps. “Overwork and Distractions are no arguments against a Medium in and of itself, but against the uncontrolled use”, my Jets and Cress. The researchers are all in agreement: The effect of technology on the brain needs to be further investigated.
The Braunschweig Professor Martin Korte speaks of a “transition state”. Phones and Tablets have made our young people are not dumber than their parents. “We have not a Twitter-brain, and we also have no Facebook-brain,” he says. The brain had its origin still in the stone age. While the man will lose in the course of its development, some skills, he will, according to Korte, the new learning.
In summary: Smartphones are an indispensable part of the lives of many young people. Experts believe that the use of digital media necessarily dumber. Researchers have, however, found that the Smartphone can distract, and thus the achievements of young people are suffering.