Could smartphone addiction affect teens’ intelligence?

Over the New Year, while waiting for my flight at Heathrow’s Terminal 5, it was noticeable how nowadays almost everyone, including young children, seems mesmerised by their smartphones – prompting the reflection that there might be more than I realised to claims about addiction to these miracles of modern technology.

The relevant statistics are certainly astonishing, verging on the incredible: a recent study of 2,500 US college students found that, on average, they spent almost nine hours a day engaged in various “cellphone activities”, including 96 minutes spent texting, 48 minutes e-mailing, 38 minutes checking Facebook and 34 minutes surfing the internet.

“The use of smartphones can be both liberating and enslaving at the same time,” the authors of the study comment, “allowing the freedom to gather information, communicate and socialise while also leading to dependence and restrictions.”

It would be reasonable to infer that for teenagers, in particular, this might influence their cognitive development. Last week, prominent educationalist Toby Young, writing in The Spectator, cited IQ expert James Flynn as claiming that smartphone addiction could account, at least in part, for the recently noted decline in scores measured by intelligence tests.

From personal experience with his own children, Young commends the app Ourpact (ourpact.com), which permits parents to deactivate access to Snapchat, Youtube, Netflix and so on.

“We have now got the system up and running,” he writes, “and it is pretty good”.

Power of sneezing

To sneeze or not to sneeze, that is the question. The account, prominently featured in this paper last week, of a 34-year-old man whose attempt to suppress a sneeze, by pinching his nose and clamping his mouth shut, landed him in hospital with a ruptured throat is a vivid reminder of the phenomenal pressures generated by this astonishingly complex combined nasal and respiratory reflex.

The former induces engorgement of the vessels in the mucous membranes lining the nose, producing copious amounts of a clear, viscid mucous. Simultaneously, the respiratory phase involves a series of deep inspirations, an active process accomplished by the contraction of three groups of muscles including the diaphragm and the intercostals between the ribs. Meanwhile, the pharynx closes, trapping the air within the lungs.

Then, beyond a certain point, the rise in pressure forces the pharynx open, expelling the mucous through the nostrils (together with the irritants or particles that initiated the reflex), at an estimated speed of 100ft per second.

While Dr Wanding Yang of Leicester University wisely warns against the potential hazards of attempting to suppress this process, allowing it to happen has also been implicated in causing several misfortunes, from bursting a blood vessel in the brain to rupture of the uterus.

But in its favour, sneezing can facilitate childbirth, as the great 17th-century physiologist William Harvey described. Summoned to a woman in protracted labour who had “fallen into a swoon and Young people in particular seem mesmerised by their phones become prostrated, I put a feather with a sneezing powder to her nostrils. As often as I applied this stimulus, her delivery was advanced – and finally a healthy living child was born”.

Tickle and streaming

This week’s medical query comes courtesy of Mrs LK from Somerset, troubled every few weeks or so by an intense tickle at the back of her throat on the left which comes on “out of the blue”. This is followed, 12 seconds later, by watering and redness of the eye on the same side, and excess salivation that runs down her larynx, causing her to cough and retch. These episodes last a couple of minutes then recur on and off for several days, after which all is well – until the next time.

Neither the ENT specialist nor neurologist she has consulted can tell her what is amiss. Any suggestions from others with a similar experience would be more than gratefully received.

‘Students spent almost nine hours a day engaged in various phone activities’