Is your phone changing the way you think? retrain your brain

Finding it hard to concentrate? It could be down to your smartphone. Julia Llewellyn Smith discovers how to retrain your brain – and your habits

Curled up on the sofa, officially watching a documentary, my right hand is fiddling incessantly with my smartphone. I like the presenter’s top, so I google “white lacy T-shirt with collar”, but on the way to find it I’m distracted by a link about a tap-dancing whippet. I decide to check Facebook but in the middle of composing a witty reply to the status update of a woman I’ve never met but who for some reason counts as one of my “friends”, I’m distracted by my email pinging. What was the presenter saying about ancient Greece? I turn to ask my husband but he’s busy on WhatsApp.

My name is Julia, and it’s fair to say I’m a smartphone addict, checking it all day long and panicking if I misplace it. My children are nearly as bad. Mercifully, phones are banned at my 13-year-old’s school but when she’s with her friends they no longer chat, instead they sit in a circle scrolling silently. My 10-year-old daughter doesn’t have a phone, but grabs mine at every opportunity to message friends and gape at YouTube videos.

It’s hard to remember life any other way, but smartphones have only been around for 11 years. I only got mine five years ago, but in that short period I’ve noticed myself becoming increasingly butterfly-brained, finding it harder to concentrate on anything for more than a few seconds. “Mum, why do you take so long to answer my questions?” my youngest asks. The answer is because my attention’s diverted by messages, news bulletins and shopping opportunities.

Teen screen time

But if I annoy my children, they infuriate me by being unable to sit through a meal without reaching for a screen. When we try to enjoy a DVD together, they find it impossible to concentrate, being used to watching three-minute clips online. We’re not alone. A recent survey showed the average person now spends five hours a day on digital devices.

All this phone time may be damaging the economy too. Last year a senior employee at the Bank of England blamed constant checking of social media for the country’s recent drop in productivity, with studies suggesting that office staff need an average of 25 minutes to refocus after “cyber slacking”. More worryingly, constant checking is rewiring the way we think. Just as with our bodies, the more we exercise certain areas of our brain, >>

the more these grow stronger, while those we neglect grow weaker until they die off.

“Every time a taxi driver works out how to reach a destination, their brain is exercised. With time, the paths in the brain associated with spatial awareness and memory grow thicker as practice makes them better and better,” explains Dr Megan Reitz, co-author of Mind Time: How 10 Mindful Minutes Can Enhance Your Work, Health & Happiness. “in the same way, when we look at Facebook or check our emails – often breaking from activities or conversations to grab our phones – we create new habits that are ingrained further, leaving us less able to focus.”

it turns out that my habit of googling everything rather than relying on memory or trying to figure out the answer myself is also damaging my problem-solving abilities, as the brain decides those areas are so underused they’re unnecessary. Experts also warn that “multitasking” – watching a soap, while trying to book a holiday, while chatting on twitter

– stops our brains from forging broad neural pathways that give us our capacity for deep thought and creativity.

“We’re doing so many things that all we’re doing is processing on a surface level,” says Frances booth, author of

The Distraction Trap: How to Focus in a Digital World. “if there’s split focus, then memories aren’t encoded – nothing goes in to your long-term memory. this has serious consequences for learning.”

New habits

if adults are at risk, things are even worse for children, whose brains are still developing. studies have shown that children who are heavy social media users exhibit “poor emotional regulation skills” because they’ve forgotten how to interact with people face-to-face. a report by the Children’s Commissioner for England described how children as young as 10 were measuring their self-worth through apps such as snapchat, often becoming clinically depressed if their posts didn’t attract enough “likes”, and anxious they’d lose friends if they didn’t respond immediately to updates.

you’d think these dire warnings would make us avoid our phones at all costs. Necessity apart, the internet is literally addictive. Recently, a former Facebook executive admitted as much, confessing that the site was deliberately designed to “hook” users, with every “like” of a post giving us a feel-good dopamine chemical hit, similar to the high experienced by a drug addict. No wonder teachers report that children whose phones are confiscated increasingly react violently, just like alcoholics deprived of their bottles. Psychologist linda blair, author of The Key to Calm, insists smartphones aren’t necessarily bad. “the trick is to see our phone as an incredibly useful tool, but only a tool. to be its master, not its slave.”

Now, after much nagging from me, my oldest is adapting to a less tech-heavy life, alternating one hour of screen time with one hour of reading a book, and deleting social media apps from her phone. i’m determined to follow her example but first i just need to browse ebay for new boots, then Whatsapp my sister-in-law, and – ooh, what was i saying? i was distracted by the cutest clip of a lion cub surfing. Do you want me to send you the link? w&h