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60-SECOND SCIENCE, Is Your Phone Actually Draining Your Brain?

Is Your Phone Actually Draining Your Brain?

Shayla Love: This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Shayla Love.

Tell me if this sounds familiar. You're trying to get some work done, and you find yourself continually picking up your cell phone. In frustration, you might slam the phone down beside you and swear to leave it alone—theoretically allowing you to focus on what you're doing.

Right now my phone is sitting next to me untouched. But have I really protected myself from its distractions or its ability to impact my mind? The answer is no, according to a well-known study in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research from 2017 entitled “Brain Drain: The Mere Presence of One's Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity.”

Cognitive and social psychologist Adrian Ward and his colleagues proposed the “brain drain hypothesis” by showing that just having a phone next to you could impact cognition—specifically, working memory, or the mental system that helps us hold information about what we're currently doing at a given moment.

Ward: The way we measure it is by having people remember words and solve math problems at the same time. And the idea there is that those are two very different cognitive skills, word memory and math problems, but they're tapping into that same general cognitive resource.

Love: In those experiments, people either had their phones on a desk, in their pockets or bags, or in the next room. The farther away a person's phone was, the better they did on those tasks.

Ward: Even when you're not consciously thinking about your phone, the process of not thinking about your phone requires some cognitive resources.

Love: This was an intriguing, though slightly concerning, finding that triggered more studies on how the presence of our smartphones might be influencing how well we're able to think. But in a new meta-analysis that looked at data from 27 different brain drain studies, the story of the brain drain hypothesis has gotten a little more complicated.

Doug Parry: If it's just sitting next to you while you're working, is that a problem or not? And I think that's quite an important question to answer, to know more about.

Love: That's Doug Parry, a lecturer at Stellenbosch University, who studies socioinformatics and who did the meta-analysis—a study in which data from multiple published papers are combined together and reanalyzed.

Parry became interested in brain drain first from studying multitasking and then from investigating something called “online vigilance…”

Parry: …which is essentially this idea that we're constantly aware of the online world, the mobile world around us. We're thinking, we're ruminating about, you know, the news cycle, the—our friends and family that we can connect to through our—through our phone, and so on.

Love: Parry's work on online vigilance led him to wonder how strong brain drain's effects really are.

Parry: I saw that there's a need to kind of bring together the sort of 20 to 30 studies that have been conducted over the last—it's about seven or eight years—on this phenomenon and see across the studies “What do we actually know about the so-called brain drain hypothesis?” and, that is, “It's a meaningful effect? Is it a consistent effect?”

Love: Past studies on brain drain looked primarily at five cognitive functions: working memory, sustained attention, inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility and fluid intelligence. Parry lumped together data for each of these functions individually and then did a sixth analysis where he looked at all the results together. In the end, he looked at 56 effect sizes on how phones affect our minds from 27 studies in 25 publications.

Parry: So looking at the five separate analyses–of the five, the only statistically significant result was for working memory.

Parry: Whereas for the other four cognitive functions, no statistically significant effects of the presence of a smartphone were found across the various effects included in those analyses. And that is somewhat consistent with Ward and colleagues. So they found a negative effect for working memory, but they didn't find a negative effect for sustained attention.

Love: Though it is similar to what Ward found, Parry's analysis also revealed the impact on working memory was much smaller than initial studies indicated.

Parry: I think the important difference here with this meta-analysis, compared to the Ward 2017 paper, is the magnitude of the effect.

Love: This matters because it can tell us whether our phones are completely diverting our attention by their mere presence or simply affecting one aspect of our cognition slightly.

Parry: A massive, massive effect: we would all be distracted all the time. And a very, very tiny effect: it would be meaningless. And this is somewhere in between. But it is a smaller effect than the earlier research has shown.

Love: Parry's meta-analysis is a preprint, which means that it hasn't been peer-reviewed yet. When I talked to Ward about that paper's findings, he said he was glad there's now been enough work on brain drain to look at evidence combined together and that, overall, Parry's work reinforces the notion that phones are interfering with our working memory over other cognitive functions such as sustained attention—or what you're paying attention to consciously.

Ward: When you're doing great at sustained attention, you know, you're thinking you're doing awesome because you're not looking at your phone. It's on the desk in front of you, but you're not paying attention to it, right? And so that's showing us no difference in sustained attention. But that process of not paying attention to it is using some of your working memory capacity. So that shows up as that significant, significant negative effect on working memory capacity.

Love: Parry thinks that his findings actually raise more questions for further study, such as whether there's something about the individuals in the past studies that led to a stronger brain drain effect for certain cognitive effects. For instance, for some people, their phones might be more important to them.

Parry: If you're very involved, and your whole life is mediated through that, the way you're orientated to its presence is going to be different.

Love: Another factor could be how susceptible a person is to FOMO, or the fear of missing out. There is an official psychologically validated scale for FOMO from 2013 that Parry says could be used alongside measuring brain drain to see if that influences the effect.

Ward: The reality is like, “We're not going to get rid of our phones. They're going to be around, and [we're] probably going to become even more dependent on them over time.” Like, I just had a kid, and I track every time this kid has a diaper on my phone, right? Like, my whole life is recorded in this little device. They are just woven into every aspect of our lives.

Love: Knowing that the presence of a phone influences working memory could lead to having more targeted technology harm reduction, or keeping an eye out for that specific effect.

In the end, this meta-analysis indicates we might not have to be super distressed about what a phone in our vicinity is doing to us. For some people, there still could be a significant brain drain, but for others, it could be more of a drip.

Thanks for listening! For 60-Second Science, I'm Shayla Love.


Is Your Phone Actually Draining Your Brain? Beansprucht Ihr Telefon tatsächlich Ihr Gehirn? ¿Su teléfono le está vaciando el cerebro? Votre téléphone draine-t-il réellement votre cerveau ? Il vostro telefono vi sta prosciugando il cervello? スマホが脳を疲弊させている? Ar jūsų telefonas iš tikrųjų iškrauna jūsų smegenis? Czy telefon faktycznie drenuje mózg? O seu telemóvel está a drenar o seu cérebro? Действительно ли ваш телефон истощает ваш мозг? Telefonunuz Aslında Beyninizi mi Tüketiyor? Чи справді ваш телефон виснажує ваш мозок? 您的手机是否真的耗尽了您的大脑? 你的手機真的在耗盡你的大腦嗎?

**Shayla Love:** This is __Scientific American__'s 60-Second Science. I'm Shayla Love.

Tell me if this sounds familiar. Dime si esto te suena. You're trying to get some work done, and you find yourself continually picking up your cell phone. Sie versuchen, Ihre Arbeit zu erledigen, und ertappen sich dabei, dass Sie ständig zum Handy greifen. Vous essayez de faire du travail et vous vous retrouvez sans cesse en train de décrocher votre téléphone portable. In frustration, you might slam the phone down beside you and swear to leave it alone—theoretically allowing you to focus on what you're doing. Aus Frustration knallen Sie vielleicht das Telefon neben sich zu und schwören sich, es in Ruhe zu lassen - theoretisch könnten Sie sich so auf Ihre Arbeit konzentrieren. Frustré, vous pourriez claquer le téléphone à côté de vous et jurer de le laisser tranquille, vous permettant théoriquement de vous concentrer sur ce que vous faites.

Right now my phone is sitting next to me untouched. Im Moment liegt mein Handy unangetastet neben mir. En ce moment même, mon téléphone est posé à côté de moi, intact. But have I really protected myself from its distractions or its ability to impact my mind? Mais me suis-je vraiment protégé de ses distractions ou de sa capacité à impacter mon esprit ? The answer is no, according to a well-known study in the __Journal of the Association for Consumer Research__ from 2017 entitled “Brain Drain: The Mere Presence of One's Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity.” الجواب هو لا، بحسب دراسة معروفة في مجلة جمعية أبحاث المستهلك عام 2017 بعنوان "هجرة الأدمغة: مجرد وجود الهاتف الذكي الخاص بالفرد يقلل من القدرة الإدراكية المتاحة". The answer is no, according to a well-known study in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research from 2017 entitled “Brain Drain: The Mere Presence of One's Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity.” La réponse est non, selon une étude bien connue du Journal of the Association for Consumer Research de 2017 intitulée « Brain Drain : The Mere Presence of One's Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity ».

Cognitive and social psychologist Adrian Ward and his colleagues proposed the “brain drain hypothesis” by showing that just having a phone next to you could impact cognition—specifically, working memory, or the mental system that helps us hold information about what we're currently doing at a given moment. Der Kognitions- und Sozialpsychologe Adrian Ward und seine Kollegen haben die "Brain Drain"-Hypothese aufgestellt, indem sie zeigten, dass allein die Tatsache, dass ein Telefon neben einem liegt, Auswirkungen auf die kognitiven Fähigkeiten haben kann - insbesondere auf das Arbeitsgedächtnis, d. h. auf das mentale System, das uns hilft, Informationen über das, was wir gerade tun, zu speichern. Le psychologue cognitif et social Adrian Ward et ses collègues ont proposé l'"hypothèse de la fuite des cerveaux" en montrant que le simple fait d'avoir un téléphone à côté de soi pouvait avoir un impact sur la cognition, en particulier la mémoire de travail ou le système mental qui nous aide à conserver des informations sur ce que nous sommes actuellement. faire à un moment donné.

**Ward:** The way we measure it is by having people remember words and solve math problems at the same time. Ward: Wir messen das, indem wir die Leute dazu bringen, sich Wörter zu merken und gleichzeitig mathematische Aufgaben zu lösen. Ward : La façon dont nous le mesurons est en faisant en sorte que les gens se souviennent des mots et résolvent des problèmes mathématiques en même temps. And the idea there is that those are two very different cognitive skills, word memory and math problems, but they're tapping into that same general cognitive resource. والفكرة هنا هي أن هاتين المهارتين المعرفيتين مختلفتان تمامًا، ذاكرة الكلمات ومسائل الرياضيات، لكنهما تستفيدان من نفس المصدر المعرفي العام. Der Gedanke dahinter ist, dass es sich um zwei sehr unterschiedliche kognitive Fähigkeiten handelt, nämlich um das Wortgedächtnis und um mathematische Probleme, die jedoch auf dieselben allgemeinen kognitiven Ressourcen zurückgreifen. L'idée est qu'il s'agit de deux compétences cognitives très différentes, la mémoire des mots et les problèmes de mathématiques, mais qu'elles font appel à la même ressource cognitive générale.

**Love:** In those experiments, people either had their phones on a desk, in their pockets or bags, or in the next room. Love: Bei diesen Experimenten hatten die Teilnehmer ihre Telefone entweder auf dem Schreibtisch, in der Tasche oder im Nebenraum. Love : Dans ces expériences, les gens avaient leur téléphone sur un bureau, dans leur poche ou leur sac, ou dans la pièce voisine. The farther away a person's phone was, the better they did on those tasks. Je weiter das Telefon einer Person entfernt war, desto besser schnitt sie bei diesen Aufgaben ab. Plus le téléphone d'une personne était éloigné, mieux elle accomplissait ces tâches.

**Ward:** Even when you're not consciously thinking about your phone, the process of not thinking about your phone requires some cognitive resources. Ward: Selbst wenn Sie nicht bewusst an Ihr Telefon denken, erfordert der Prozess, nicht an Ihr Telefon zu denken, einige kognitive Ressourcen.

**Love:** This was an intriguing, though slightly concerning, finding that triggered more studies on how the presence of our smartphones might be influencing how well we're able to think. Liebe: Dies war ein faszinierendes, wenn auch etwas beunruhigendes Ergebnis, das zu weiteren Studien darüber führte, wie die Anwesenheit unserer Smartphones unsere Denkfähigkeit beeinflussen könnte. Amour : C'était une découverte intrigante, bien que légèrement préoccupante, qui a déclenché d'autres études sur la façon dont la présence de nos smartphones pourrait influencer notre capacité à penser. Amore: Si tratta di una scoperta intrigante, anche se un po' preoccupante, che ha dato il via a ulteriori studi su come la presenza dei nostri smartphone possa influenzare la nostra capacità di pensare. But in a new meta-analysis that looked at data from 27 different brain drain studies, the story of the brain drain hypothesis has gotten a little more complicated. In einer neuen Meta-Analyse, die Daten aus 27 verschiedenen Studien zur Abwanderung von Fachkräften ausgewertet hat, ist die Geschichte der Abwanderungshypothese jedoch etwas komplizierter geworden.

**Doug Parry:** If it's just sitting next to you while you're working, is that a problem or not? Doug Parry: Wenn es nur neben Ihnen sitzt, während Sie arbeiten, ist das ein Problem oder nicht? Doug Parry : S'il est simplement assis à côté de vous pendant que vous travaillez, est-ce un problème ou non ? And I think that's quite an important question to answer, to know more about. Und ich denke, dass es wichtig ist, diese Frage zu beantworten und mehr darüber zu erfahren. Je pense qu'il est important de répondre à cette question et d'en savoir plus.

**Love:** That's Doug Parry, a lecturer at Stellenbosch University, who studies socioinformatics and who did the meta-analysis—a study in which data from multiple published papers are combined together and reanalyzed. Liebe: Das ist Doug Parry, Dozent an der Universität Stellenbosch, der Sozioinformatik studiert und die Meta-Analyse durchgeführt hat - eine Studie, bei der Daten aus mehreren veröffentlichten Arbeiten kombiniert und neu analysiert werden.

Parry became interested in brain drain first from studying multitasking and then from investigating something called “online vigilance…” Parry interessierte sich für das Thema "Brain Drain" zunächst durch die Untersuchung von Multitasking und dann durch die Erforschung der so genannten "Online-Vigilanz"... Parry s'est intéressé à la fuite des cerveaux d'abord en étudiant le multitâche, puis en enquêtant sur ce qu'on appelle la "vigilance en ligne"...

**Parry:** …which is essentially this idea that we're constantly aware of the online world, the mobile world around us. Parry: ...das ist im Wesentlichen die Idee, dass wir uns ständig der Online-Welt, der mobilen Welt um uns herum bewusst sind. We're thinking, we're ruminating about, you know, the news cycle, the—our** **friends and family that we can connect to through our—through our phone, and so on. Wir denken nach, wir grübeln über den Nachrichtenzyklus nach, über unsere Freunde und Familie, mit denen wir über unser Telefon in Verbindung stehen können, und so weiter. Nous réfléchissons, nous ruminons, vous savez, le cycle des nouvelles, les... nos amis et notre famille auxquels nous pouvons nous connecter via notre... via notre téléphone, et ainsi de suite.

**Love:** Parry's work on online vigilance led him to wonder how strong brain drain's effects really are. Liebe: Parrys Arbeit über die Online-Wachsamkeit hat ihn dazu gebracht, sich zu fragen, wie stark die Auswirkungen des Brain Drain wirklich sind. L'amour : Les travaux de Parry sur la vigilance en ligne l'ont amené à s'interroger sur l'ampleur réelle des effets de la fuite des cerveaux.

**Parry:** I saw that there's a need to kind of bring together the sort of 20 to 30 studies that have been conducted over the last—it's about seven or eight years—on this phenomenon and see across the studies “What do we actually know about the so-called brain drain hypothesis?” and, that is, “It's a meaningful effect? Parry: Ich habe gesehen, dass es notwendig ist, die 20 bis 30 Studien, die in den letzten sieben oder acht Jahren zu diesem Phänomen durchgeführt wurden, zusammenzufassen und zu prüfen, was wir über die so genannte "Brain Drain"-Hypothese wissen und ob es sich um einen bedeutenden Effekt handelt. Parry : J'ai vu qu'il était nécessaire de rassembler le genre de 20 à 30 études qui ont été menées au cours des dernières années — c'est environ sept ou huit ans — sur ce phénomène et de voir à travers les études : " Que savons-nous réellement sur l'hypothèse dite de la fuite des cerveaux ? » et, c'est-à-dire « C'est un effet significatif ? Parry: Ho visto che c'è la necessità di riunire i 20-30 studi che sono stati condotti negli ultimi sette o otto anni su questo fenomeno e vedere tra gli studi: "Cosa sappiamo effettivamente della cosiddetta ipotesi della fuga dei cervelli?" e, cioè, "È un effetto significativo? Is it a consistent effect?” Est-ce un effet constant ? »

**Love:** Past studies on brain drain looked primarily at five cognitive functions: working memory, sustained attention, inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility and fluid intelligence. الحب: تناولت الدراسات السابقة حول هجرة الأدمغة في المقام الأول خمس وظائف معرفية: الذاكرة العاملة، والانتباه المستمر، والتحكم المثبط، والمرونة الإدراكية، والذكاء السائل. Liebe: Frühere Studien zum Gehirnabfluss untersuchten vor allem fünf kognitive Funktionen: Arbeitsgedächtnis, anhaltende Aufmerksamkeit, Hemmungssteuerung, kognitive Flexibilität und fluide Intelligenz. Love: Past studies on brain drain looked primarily at five cognitive functions: working memory, sustained attention, inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility and fluid intelligence. L'amour : Les études antérieures sur la fuite des cerveaux portaient principalement sur cinq fonctions cognitives : la mémoire de travail, l'attention soutenue, le contrôle inhibiteur, la flexibilité cognitive et l'intelligence fluide. Parry lumped together data for each of these functions individually and then did a sixth analysis where he looked at all the results together. Parry fasste die Daten für jede dieser Funktionen einzeln zusammen und führte dann eine sechste Analyse durch, bei der er alle Ergebnisse zusammen betrachtete. Parry a regroupé les données pour chacune de ces fonctions individuellement, puis a effectué une sixième analyse où il a examiné tous les résultats ensemble. In the end, he looked at 56 effect sizes on how phones affect our minds from 27 studies in 25 publications. Am Ende untersuchte er 56 Effektgrößen aus 27 Studien in 25 Veröffentlichungen darüber, wie Telefone unsere Gedanken beeinflussen.

**Parry:** So looking at the five separate analyses–of the five, the only statistically significant result was for working memory. Parry: Wenn man sich die fünf separaten Analysen ansieht, war das einzige statistisch signifikante Ergebnis für das Arbeitsgedächtnis. Parry : Si l'on examine les cinq analyses distinctes, le seul résultat statistiquement significatif concerne la mémoire de travail.

**Parry:** Whereas for the other four cognitive functions, no statistically significant effects of the presence of a smartphone were found across the various effects included in those analyses. Parry: Für die anderen vier kognitiven Funktionen hingegen wurden keine statistisch signifikanten Auswirkungen des Vorhandenseins eines Smartphones bei den verschiedenen in diesen Analysen berücksichtigten Effekten gefunden. Parry : Alors que pour les quatre autres fonctions cognitives, aucun effet statistiquement significatif de la présence d'un smartphone n'a été trouvé parmi les divers effets inclus dans ces analyses. And that is somewhat consistent with Ward and colleagues. Und das stimmt einigermaßen mit Ward und Kollegen überein. Et cela est quelque peu cohérent avec Ward et ses collègues. So they found a** **negative effect for working memory, but they didn't find a negative effect for sustained attention. Sie fanden also einen negativen Effekt für das Arbeitsgedächtnis, aber keinen negativen Effekt für die anhaltende Aufmerksamkeit.

**Love:** Though it is similar to what Ward found, Parry's analysis also revealed the impact on working memory was much smaller than initial studies indicated.

**Parry:** I think the important difference here with this meta-analysis, compared to the Ward 2017 paper, is the magnitude of the effect.

**Love:** This matters because it can tell us whether our phones are __completely__ diverting our attention by their mere presence or simply affecting one aspect of our cognition slightly. Amour : c'est important car cela peut nous dire si nos téléphones détournent complètement notre attention par leur simple présence ou affectent simplement légèrement un aspect de notre cognition.

**Parry:** A massive, massive effect: we would all be distracted all the time. And a very, very tiny effect: it would be meaningless. Et un très, très petit effet : ça n'aurait aucun sens. And this is somewhere in between. Et c'est quelque part entre les deux. But it is a smaller effect than the earlier research has shown.

**Love:** Parry's meta-analysis is a preprint, which means that it hasn't been peer-reviewed yet. Love: La méta-analyse de Parry est une préimpression, ce qui signifie qu'elle n'a pas encore été évaluée par des pairs. When I talked to Ward about that paper's findings, he said he was glad there's now been enough work on brain drain to look at evidence combined together and that, overall, Parry's work reinforces the notion that phones __are__ interfering with our working memory over other cognitive functions such as sustained attention—or what you're paying attention to consciously. Lorsque j'ai parlé à Ward des conclusions de cet article, il a dit qu'il était heureux qu'il y ait maintenant suffisamment de travail sur la fuite des cerveaux pour examiner les preuves combinées et que, dans l'ensemble, le travail de Parry renforce l'idée que les téléphones interfèrent avec notre mémoire de travail par rapport à d'autres systèmes cognitifs. des fonctions telles que l'attention soutenue ou ce à quoi vous faites consciemment attention.

**Ward:** When you're doing great at sustained attention, you know, you're thinking you're doing awesome because you're not looking at your phone. It's on the desk in front of you, but you're not paying attention to it, right? And so that's showing us no difference in sustained attention. Il n'y a donc pas de différence au niveau de l'attention soutenue. But that process of not paying attention to it is using some of your working memory capacity. Mais ce processus de ne pas y prêter attention utilise une partie de votre capacité de mémoire de travail. So that shows up as that significant, significant negative effect on working memory capacity.

**Love:** Parry thinks that his findings actually raise more questions for further study, such as whether there's something about the individuals in the past studies that led to a stronger  brain drain effect for certain cognitive effects. For instance, for some people, their phones might be more important to them.

**Parry:** If you're very involved, and your whole life is mediated through that, the way you're orientated to its presence is going to be different. Parry : Si vous êtes très impliqué, et que toute votre vie passe par là, la façon dont vous vous orientez vers sa présence va être différente.

**Love:** Another factor could be how susceptible a person is to FOMO, or the fear of missing out. Amour : Un autre facteur pourrait être la sensibilité d'une personne au FOMO ou la peur de passer à côté. There __is__ an official psychologically validated scale for FOMO from 2013 that Parry says could be used alongside measuring brain drain to see if that influences the effect.

**Ward:** The reality is like, “We're not going to get rid of our phones. Ward : La réalité est la suivante : "Nous n'allons pas nous débarrasser de nos téléphones. They're going to be around, and [we're] probably going to become even more dependent on them over time.” Like, I just had a kid, and I track every time this kid has a diaper on my phone, right? Ils vont être là, et [nous allons] probablement devenir encore plus dépendants d'eux avec le temps. Comme, je viens d'avoir un enfant, et je suis chaque fois que cet enfant a une couche sur mon téléphone, n'est-ce pas ? Like, my whole life is recorded in this little device. Comme, toute ma vie est enregistrée dans ce petit appareil. They are just woven into every aspect of our lives.

**Love:** Knowing that the presence of a phone influences working memory could lead to having more targeted technology harm reduction, or keeping an eye out for that specific effect. Amour : Savoir que la présence d'un téléphone influence la mémoire de travail pourrait conduire à avoir une réduction des méfaits de la technologie plus ciblée, ou à garder un œil sur cet effet spécifique.

In the end, this meta-analysis indicates we might not have to be __super__ distressed about what a phone in our vicinity is doing to us. En fin de compte, cette méta-analyse indique que nous n'avons peut-être pas à être très inquiets de ce qu'un téléphone à proximité nous fait. For some people, there still could be a significant brain drain, but for others, it could be more of a drip.

Thanks for listening! For 60-Second Science, I'm Shayla Love.