How Do Smart Phones Affect Society

Smart phones, practically hand-held computers, hinder society through many of its features. For instance, smart phone use while driving impacts not only society, but also the individual person using it, negatively in a number of ways. Firstly, the use of GPS causes a person’s brain to not function properly. McGill University conducted a study that shows that dependence on GPS has a negative effect on brain function, especially the hippocampus. The hippocampus is in charge of memory and navigation (Edwards). To clarify, when you rely too much on your GPS, your brain’s ability to work begins to diminish, especially within certain parts of it. In addition, Smart phones have been proven to be a major factor in distracted driving. A test was conducted to see how using smart phones while driving impacted the response rate to stimuli around a person. While using smart phones, it …show more content…
Search engines are often unreliable, but people believe what they read off search engines anyway. People never look for a guarantee that what they read on the internet is correct, they just believe it because it was typed on the internet (Flanagin). This models that people are becoming completely gullible and will believe anything they read, no matter how false it could appear. Second, because answers are available at the click of a button, no one learns to think for themselves. Students are increasingly so dependent on the internet for their information that critical thinking programs that do not address the form and quality of persuasion that medium are flirting with the anachronistic pedagogy. (Browne, Freeman, Williamson) This shows that students are almost afraid to think for themselves, and when presented with the opportunity to do so, they do not know how to react. Continuously using a search engine’s information can cause people to be uninformed and disable their ability to generate their own