Smartphones are detrimental to the mind and body

Mobile devices don’t just simplify tasks – they change the way we experience ourselves and our bodies. A team of specialists from Hokkaido University (Japan) decided to understand what is behind the constant attraction to the screen and how it affects attention and body awareness.

The project combined philosophy and psychology. The authors wanted to understand how digital technologies interact with perception and the body. They were particularly interested in why some people are literally stuck on their smartphone even in a non-stressful environment, while others are more easily distracted from it.

Fifty-eight young volunteers performed a visual test, where you had to find letters on the screen as quickly as possible. In this case, the background flashed images – in some cases it was neutral “noise” pictures, in others – photos associated with smartphones: call, message, lock screen.

The scientists then studied the participants’ reactions. Based on response time, they divided the subjects into two groups. The first was easily distracted by smartphone images, regardless of the difficulty of the task. The second lost concentration only in simple conditions, when the attention load was lower.

Interestingly, those who were steadily distracted by the phone had other features. They were worse at sensing their body signals – such as heartbeat or tension. In addition, these people had a more pronounced spike in heart rate during the display of “smartphone” images.

The findings echo the mechanisms of addiction – such distractibility and poor connection to bodily sensations resemble the behavior of gambling or nicotine addiction. The person loses sensitivity to self and simultaneously reacts strongly to an external stimulus – in this case, the phone.

The findings help to further understand the nature of digital addiction. It manifests itself in more than just the difficulty of putting away the smartphone. It affects inner sensitivity, prevents you from monitoring your own state, makes a person more vulnerable to overload.

In the future, scientists plan to delve deeper into this topic. Their goal is to track how the brain reacts when attention shifts to the phone, and whether it is possible to notice these changes already in adolescence. This approach could help form effective habits of digital behavior before an addiction is formed.

The authors hope that their work will be a step toward creating educated prevention strategies. The earlier a person learns to recognize his or her reactions and manage attention, the easier it will be to maintain mental and physical health in a world full of digital stimuli.