smartphones are destroying your memory

Your Android and iOS phones are killing cognitive thinking and declarative memory, say experts

Dr Hozefa A Bhinderwala, psychiatrist at Saifee and Prince Aly Khan Hospital, received a call from his brother last week. "He said, 'You are the doctor, but I performed a surgery today'."

The specialist's brother was referring to having managed to get his nine-year-old son to let go off his smartphone, which he was worried had grown into "an extended limb". "As soon as my brother would get back home, his son would grab the phone and stay glued to it right until bedtime, playing games and fiddling with apps," says the psychiatrist.

This is not a lone case. Dr Sangeeta Ravat, Head of the Department of Neurology at Seth G S Medical College and KEM Hospital, says the co-relation between mild Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (significant difficulties of inattention and impulsiveness or a combination of the two) among young adults and the excessive use of gadgets has been the subject of debate at recent medical conferences.

And if the Indian smartphone user study is accurate, we have reason to worry. The survey conducted by AC Nielsen across 46 cities in September and October 2012 revealed that the number of smartphones had touched 40 million, and almost half of the users were under 25. The dramatic growth was driven by a desire 'to stay connected and have instant access to social networking sites', it said.

Although the gadgets are designed to make life easier, and the user, work-smart, experts warn that their unrelenting pings and blitzkrieg of updates can throw the brain into overdrive, affecting its cells and blunting the mind over time. Here's all that's at stake:

Declarative memory reduced
Culprit: Reminder features Declarative memory refers to data that can be consciously recalled, such as important phone numbers, date and time of important meetings, and critical dates like your birthdays that we store in our brain. "While earlier, we'd easily remember at least 10 important phone numbers by rote, today we can't recall any other than our own. Our mind is not challenged. Everything is fed in the phonebook, and under categories — family, work, miscellaneous. Sometimes, there are so many, we can't recall the face to the name and number," says Dr Ravat.

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