The article “How Smart-phones Hijack Our Minds” by Nicolas Carr is about the destructive use of smart phones. So many people depend on their smart phones that it damages with the outcome of their work. Smart phones also make it harder to focus and remember since everything is now saved on your phone. The destruction with the phones don’t only occur with everyday activities, but it also affects your relationships and can cause distractions. Overall, the use of smart phones has shown negative effects on people’s minds. Even though smart phones are supposed to make working easier, studies have shown that they actually hurt our performance. In 2015, a Journal of Experimental Psychology study had 166 people to test. The experiment was to have the participants work on a challenging task while their phones start beeping and buzzing. The results showed that the worker became messier and had their attention elsewhere, whether or not they checked their phone. Dr. Adrian Ward is a psychologist and marketing professor at the University of Texas at Austin, he has been working with the effects of smart phones on our thoughts and decision making. Dr. Ward believes that we have grown so attached to our phones that they reduce our intelligence with their presence. To test this theory, Dr. Ward and three colleagues began a clever experiment to test his idea. They decided to enlist 520 undergraduate students at UCSD and make them perform two standard tests of intellectual acuity. The first test evaluated “available cognitive capacity”, it’s a test to measure how fully a person’s mind can focus on a single task. The second test gauged “fluid intelligence”, a person’s ability to understand and answer an unfamiliar problem. The only difference was the location of the student’s smart phone. Some students had their phone on the desk, while others had it in their bag or pocket. Others were even asked to leave their phone in a different room. The results of this test showed that “As the phone’s proximity increased, brainpower decreased” (pg.3). Smart phones have become such an important part in our lives that we lose focus with or without them. When they’re in the palms of our hands we can’t seem to stop using it; when we don’t have
Do you think that you could go a whole day with your phone in your back pocket without touching it? The author of ‘How smartphones hijack our minds” doesn’t think so. Nicholas Carr uses rhetorical devices such as cited authorities, examples, and uses statistical facts and figures to convey his view that smartphones hijacked our minds. These rhetorical devices are used to reshape your thinking about how much your phones take over your minds and how much they truly affect you without you even knowing. He shares many studies and experiments of students that have taken tests with different controlled variables to see if his statement is factual and that there is evidence that backs it up.
In today’s world, distractions remain prevalent in simple everyday occurrences. Amongst these distractions is the use of cell phones whether simply walking down the hallway absorbed in a conversation or behind the wheel driving down the highway. Cell phones, no matter the context, are a major distraction. They have managed to pull us away from spending time with our families and appearing in places they are not prevalent such as family dinners and behind the wheel of a car.
Today, smartphones are everywhere. Just about everybody uses them from the time they get up, to the time they go to bed. With this personal tool, a lot of people have seen positive effects from using the device. However, some believe that people are going to far with a smartphone and that now it’s becoming more than a personal companion. This is what Nicholas Carr believes in “How Smartphones Hijack Our Minds.” In the essay Carr argues that smartphones are having a negative effect on people’s minds. He strengthens his argument by use of fact, word choice, and emotional appeal.
In “How Smartphones are Hijacking our Minds”, Nicholas Carr argues that smartphones are hijacking our minds. To strengthen his claim, Nicholas Carr uses strong diction, statistics, and irony, to emphasize phones hijacking minds.
The message from this section sticks out to me because I am surprised about the average smartphone user checks his or her phone around 150 times a day (Huffington, 2015). The statistic shows that how often smartphone users check or use their phones per day. Moreover, it also tells us how our brain is forced to distract attention continually, and it becomes difficult for us to focus on certain things when we use the smartphone too often. Technology products are like the serpent in the digital garden of Eden, which gives us what we want, but not necessarily what we need. Technology devices will not be helpful for people when we either overuse it or become addicted to it. My
Over the past few decades, technology has greatly improved. Computers have advanced from being the size of a room to a portable item we can carry in our pockets. The vast majority of Americans carry a cell phone at all times, or at least have one within arm’s reach. In today’s technology oriented world, people can be easily susceptible to an overuse of their cell phone; this susceptibility causes multiple distractions in the key settings of our daily lives.
We currently live in a society where technology has become a necessity, more specifically, cell phones have become essential and people go crazy when they are without this particular device. This obsession with our cellular devices has caused many deaths, affected our form of communication with others, and making us stupider.
In the article “Who says smart phone addiction is a bad thing? The case for constant connectivity.” (Toronto Life, 2012), Jesse Brown breaks down his reasons and beliefs on the negativity surrounding smart phones that perceived as an addiction. Correspondingly, Brown states that notification sounds and buzzing from our devices tells us, we are important and wanted, however we fear that we won’t be able to live without this constant stream of reassuring stimulation. Moreover, Brown tries to convey that smartphones are not the problem, we’re the problem. We reply on smartphones for everything way more than we need to. Furthermore, we make checking our smartphones our top priority by immediately jumping when we hear sounds that indicate notifications. Accordingly, we are on high alert because of these notifications, which could be anything from an important work update or a friend’s text.
We interact with our cell phone everyday and we have developed an intimate relationship with our technology. Deborah Lupton in the digitalized self/body argues that technology has become “personalized prosthetics of the self” (Lupton, pg.166) in which I have become emotionally attached to my phone and it has become part of me. My phone is always close to my body either in my pocket or in my hand. When I put my phone in the drawer for the whole day and went out without it, I was feeling depressed and insecure. It had a mental impact on my body as it left my body even for a short period of time. Lupton describes that, “the boundaries between self and other, human and machine, body and technology have become ever more blurred” (Lupton, pg.167). We can no longer distinguish between human and technology because it has immersed into one. Technology is literally attached to our bodies throughout our daily routine and everything we do requires
In today’s world, there are many distractions that remain prevalent in simple everyday occurrences. Amongst these is the use of cell phone whether you are simply walking down the hallway absorbed in a conversation or you are behind the wheel driving down the highway. Cell phones, no matter the context, are a major distraction. They have managed to pull us away from spending time with our families and are appearing in places they are not prevalent such as family dinners and behind the wheel of a car.
Every day of our lives, we watch as technology advances in leaps and bounds, so it was only logical when the cell phone came into existence, it would also be important to develop ways for a phone to be more than just a phone. With the explosion of the internet age people needed a way to bring their computers on the go, one that could fit in the palm of their hand. Whether it be checking emails, updating social networks or even playing games, smartphones seem to do it all. There is however, a dark side to every technological advance to everything that makes our lives more convenient. Smartphones are not only a huge distraction in our lives but are also known to cause health problems in those that use them and even have negative effects on society as a whole.
In today’s day and age, cellphone usage has increased tremendously. Almost everyone has had a cell phone since middle school age, or even younger. People spend an average of five hours on their phones a day from recent studies (Perez, 2017). Cell phones are a means of communicating with people more often and faster. The average cell phone user spends two hours a day using them. This shows that out of all the down time people have from school, jobs, or other activities, they are usually going to be on their cell phones. Almost everyone is addicted to having the small, metal, piece of communication device in their specially trained hands and fingers. Every time a stinging vibration surges up their bones, they immediately start
In Conclusion, I would first like to state that the reason I feel this way about smartphones is because I used to depend on the use of my smartphone more than the use of any other book, the opinion of any other person, or sometimes common sense itself. I had become addicted to the use of my smartphone and didn’t know I was excessively using my device to accomplish tasks that I would do before without the need of this device,
There is increasing evidence that handheld electronic devices such as smart phones and tablets can become so compelling that many people find themselves checking them or staring at them so often that it causes relationship strain, poor judgement behind the wheel, lost productivity at work and school, and lost sleep. All of these issues can and will increase stress for individuals and families. However, there appears to be more to it.
If I were to ask each of you if you were able to go an entire day without your mobile device, very few can say they`d be able to do so. In fact, in a recent TIME Magazine Mobility Poll, 84% out of 5000 people surveyed in 8 different countires, admitted that they couldn’t go a single day without their phones and a third of respondents admitted that being without their mobile device for even short periods of time leaves them feeling anxious. It is clear that whenever we`re waiting for those last five minutes before the bell rings to every class, our automatic impulse is to reach for our phone. Do you really need to check anything that important? The sad truth is that we have become far too dependent on our phones. The fear that we might miss the latest gossip, or the most recent updates on all of our social webesites seems more like an addiction than anything else. We`ve clouded our vision as to what is really important, and that is-quality human interaction.