New Study Reveal: Smartphone Within Reach Diverts Your Focus And Effects Work

What does the new study about Smartphones reveal?

Keeping your smartphone within your reach, even if it is turned off, minimizes an individual’s ability to perform important tasks effectively. The focus gets diverted. Even if your conscious mind is not thinking about your phone, your unconscious mind is saying continuously that you can’t use your smartphone right now; you need to focus on work at hand. Adrian Ward, Assistant Professor at McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin in the US said that when smartphone is within your reach, your mind is occupied by why you should not use it. Your brain gets occupied by something you don’t want it to get occupied with and subtly your time keeps on getting wasted.

Interesting: SmartPhone users are more rational compared to PC users as study reveals

An experiment was conducted, with 800 individuals and it was seen how effectively they can work when their smartphone is within their reach.

 The first experiment: Sit on a computer; take a test that requires your full focus. Keep your phones on desk or in pocket, but they should be turned to silent.

Result: Those participants who phones were in completely other room performed better than those with phones on desks or in pockets and bags.

Finding in Journal of the Association for Consumer Research: Even the presence of your smartphone nearby minimizes your cognitive capacity to focus on the given task.

Similar experiment was conducted and it was found out that those who depend more on smartphones didn’t perform that well compared to less dependent individuals, with the condition that the smartphone was placed on desk, in their pocket or in bag.

Moreover merely the presence of smartphone was enough to distract the individuals, even if it was turned off, lying face down on the desk,