Are we really addicted to our cell phones? Just keeping your phone in eye sight can distract you, a study says.
Researchers at the University of Southern Maine asked students to perform tasks that required rapt attention. The first test asked students to circle a certain number on a page of 20 rows of numbers. The second test was trickier. It asked the students to circle the magic number, but also to cross off any adjacent numbers that added up to the target number, according to Daily Mail.
Half of the students kept their cell phones on the desk during the experiment and the other half kept the phones away.
The group that did not have a visual on their cell phones scored an average of 26 compared to the other group's 21. The undistracted group scored 20 percent higher than the unfocused group.
Bill Thornton, a social psychologist at the University of Southern Maine, wrote that the distraction could have "obvious consequences," like slower reaction time.
"Results of two studies reported here provide further evidence that the 'mere presence' of a cell phone may be sufficiently distracting to produce diminished attention and deficits in task-performance, especially for tasks with greater attentional and cognitive demands," wrote Thornton, according to Daily Mail.
"The implications for such an unintended negative consequence may be quite wide-ranging (for example, productivity in school and the work place)," he continued.
How addicted are we?
- Cell phone users check their phones an average of 150 times a day.
- Cell phones are checked by the average user every 10 minutes.
- Researchers at Baylor University in Texas found that the average female student spends 10 hours a day on her phone (emailing, texting and using social media). The average male student spends eight hours on his, according to Daily Mail.
