Smart Tech Is Not Making People Dumber, Study Suggests
According to a new University of Cincinnati research by social/behavioural expert Anthony Chemero, while there are plenty of negatives associated with smart technology, there is also a positive side to it.
“Despite the headlines, there is no scientific evidence that shows that smartphones and digital technology harm our biological cognitive abilities,” says the UC professor of philosophy and psychology who recently co-authored a paper stating such in Nature Human Behaviour.
In the paper, Chemero and colleagues at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management expound on the evolution of the digital age, explaining how smart technology supplements thinking, thus helping us to excel.
“What smartphones and digital technology seem to do instead is to change the ways in which we engage our biological cognitive abilities,” Chemero says, adding “these changes are actually cognitively beneficial.”
For example, he says, your smartphone knows the way to the baseball stadium so that you don’t have to dig out a map or ask for directions, which frees up brain energy to think about something else. The same holds true in a professional setting: “We’re not solving complex mathematical problems with pen and paper or memorising phone numbers in 2021.”
Computers, tablets, and smartphones, he says, function as an auxiliary, serving as tools that are good at memorisation, calculation and storing information and presenting information when you need it.
