Comment by xrd
1 day ago
Totally anecdotal but I think phones have made us less present, or said another way, less capable of using our brains effectively. It isn't exactly dumb but it feels very close.
I definitely think we are smarter if you are using IQ, but are we less reactive and less tribal? I'm not so sure.
There's quite a lot of research into what our increasing reliance on technology is doing to our briains.
Here is one paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-62877-0
"Although the longitudinal sample was small, we observed an important effect of GPS use over time, whereby greater GPS use since initial testing was associated with a steeper decline in hippocampal-dependent spatial memory. Importantly, we found that those who used GPS more did not do so because they felt they had a poor sense of direction, suggesting that extensive GPS use led to a decline in spatial memory rather than the other way around."