Is Your Phone Changing The Way You Think?

Struggling to concentrate? It could be down to your smartphone. Author Julia Llewellyn Smith discovers how to retrain your brain – and your habits.

Curled up on the couch, officially watching a documentary, my right hand is fiddling incessantly with my smartphone. I like the presenter’s top, so I google ‘white lacy T-shirt with collar’, but on the way to find it, I’m distracted by a link about a tap-dancing whippet. I decide to check Facebook, but in the middle of composing a witty reply to the status update of a woman I’ve never met but who, for some reason, counts as one of my ‘friends’, I’m distracted by my e-mail pinging. What was the presenter saying about ancient Greece? I turn to ask my husband, but he’s busy on WhatsApp.

My name is Julia, and it’s fair to say I’m a smartphone addict, checking it all day long and panicking if I misplace it. My children are nearly as bad. Mercifully, phones are banned at my 13-year-old’s school, but when she’s with her friends they no longer chat; instead, they sit in a circle scrolling silently. My 10-year-old daughter doesn’t have a phone, but grabs mine at every chance to message friends and gape at YouTube videos.

It’s hard to remember life any other way, but smartphones have only been around for 20-odd years. I only got mine five years ago, but have since noticed myself becoming increasingly butterfly-brained, finding it harder to concentrate on anything for more than just a few seconds. “Mom, why do you take so long to answer my questions?” my youngest asks me. The answer is, because my attention’s diverted by messages, news bulletins and shopping opportunities.

Teen screen time