Smarter on Smartphones?

Discussion about Smartphones

My quotes:

• from last week’s lesson: “Kids lose the ability to converse.”
• from the TedTalk: Your phone is like “a power tool – useful but dangerous”.
• from the article “We ingest so much material that it’s impossible not to learn something.”

I used to think that whether smartphones make someone smarter or not just depended on the person. I still think that, but now I realise that there is much more to it because smartphones and apps are wired to make us addicted. And like any addiction anyone can be a victim, ‘smart’ or not. In the TedTalk another quote I had pulled out but hadn’t mentioned was something along the lines of: those who spent much more time on social media “were two years less creative” than those who used it less. This somehow led me to think that it’s not that technology is making us more/less smart knowledge-wise, but more/less smart about our decisions. Our decisions on what we choose to spend our time on, whether its looking at electronic National Geographic articles and watching documentaries, or just aimlessly scrolling through your feed on Instagram. It’s getting more and more difficult to make the better choice for more people. So it does depend on the person, the habits we allow ourselves to develop and if we are actually willing to overturn the bad ones.

all images from Google and labeled for reuse with modification