Even in silent mode, the phone still causes interference
Whether it's concentration or working memory, it seems that whenever we want to multitask, it's badly affected. I'm sure you're thinking by now, just turn off your laptop, put your phone on silent mode and put it in your pocket, but it's not that simple. As mentioned in the previous chapter, mobile phones have amazing magic that can attract people's attention.
A survey of memory and concentration among 500 college students found that students who kept their phones outside the classroom performed better than those who switched to silent mode. Even the students themselves did not think that putting their mobile phones on their bodies would have an impact, but the test results said it all. Just putting it in your pocket interferes with concentration. The same phenomenon was observed in other experiments.
One of them is having 800 people do something on the computer that requires concentration. As a result, subjects who left their phones in other rooms fared better than those who put their phones on silent mode and put them in their pockets. The title of this experimental report has actually pointed out the conclusion of the experiment - "The brain is fragile - even if the presence of a smartphone is only a little bit, the capacity of cognitive ability will be reduced."
There is also an experiment that uses the task of "quickly finding several sentences hidden on the screen" that requires concentration, and the Japanese researchers who conducted the experiment also came to the same conclusion. A mobile phone was placed next to the screen of half of the subjects, but the phone was not theirs and was told not to touch it. For the remaining half, they put a small notepad on the table. The results of it? The subjects assigned to Notepad solved the problem better. It seems that just sitting there can take away focus.
Just the connection can be distracting
It seems that our brains subconsciously sense the digital magic of the mobile phone in our pocket, so we spend all our intelligent processing power on the matter of "ignoring the mobile phone", and as a result, we cannot exert our original focus. When you think about it, it's not surprising. Because dopamine tells our brain what matters and what to focus on. A cell phone that sends us out hundreds of times a day with dopamine is just something to be concerned about.
I believe you must have noticed that this deliberate ignoring of something is actually an act of actively forcing the brain to operate. You put your mobile phone on the table because you are drinking tea and chatting with friends, maybe you also deliberately put the screen down in order not to be distracted. However, even so, there is still an urge to pick up the phone, unless you have to be enlightened and tell yourself that you must not touch it. This is no surprise. In order to ignore this constant release of dopamine in small quantities hundreds of times throughout the day, it is necessary to carve up some of the brain's intellectual capacity.
When the brain does its best to fight the magic of the phone, it has less capacity to do other things. If it's dealing with things that don't require much concentration, it shouldn't be a big problem, but when it's really necessary to focus, problems arise. In one study in the United States, subjects were given a difficult test that required concentration. Some subjects received emails or phone calls from the experiment moderator during the test without asking them to answer anything. However, the subjects who received emails or phone calls got many questions wrong on the quiz, up to three times as many wrong answers!
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