Did you know: smartphone use provokes attention deficit and hyperactivity symptoms

Finding yourself struggling to concentrate and pay attention to tasks you don't find particularly stimulating, like doing chores? Or maybe you are borderline incapable of sitting down for more than a minute without getting the jitters? Regardless of the severity of your experience, spending too much time with your smartphone could be a major contributor to your condition, which shares more than a few symptoms with those of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

A recent scientific survey by a research team from the University of Virginia established that smartphone interruptions can cause greater attention and hyperactivity symptoms even among people from a nonclinical population. As part of the study, 221 university students were asked to maximise interruptions by turning all their notification and alerts on while keeping their smartphones within reach. This went on for a week, and then the participants were asked to do the opposite – again, over the course of seven days.

It may seem ironic, but the smarter smartphones get, the dumber we become.

The results firmly showed that the students experienced much higher levels of inability to pay attention and restlessness during the week of intense smartphone use. They experienced ADHD-like symptoms, such as difficult focusing, getting bored easily when trying to focus, fidgeting, inability to sit still, and struggled to do quiet tasks and activities. According to research leader Dr. Kostadin Kushlev, smartphones contributed to the development of these symptoms by presenting a quick and easy source of distraction.

If you consider yourself in a similar position but don't want to abandon your smartphone, we suggest you try out applications like Offtime for Android (link) and Moment for iOS (link). They will purposefully mute your smartphone's most distracting apps and notifications for a given time period which you can dedicate to yourself and any tasks that require serious concentration. If these don't help, you'll have to put yourself on a smartphone diet. Or maybe go all out and downgrade to humble feature phone without games and data connection. Whatever you decide to do, rest assured that you are not alone and salvation is near!

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via TechRadar