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Do Cell Phones Make Us Stupid?
Noodleroni writes "I came across this article on MSNBC that discusses why it seems cell phone users are so stupid sometimes. A very interesting read." Absolutely no scientific basis in this - 'cept for the DoCoMo study, but it still seems true.
Less so on the cell phone since I tend to avoid the phone whenever I can. But with the internet, wireless PDAs, computers, and I guess the cell phones - they have taken over pretty much all thought for me. If I need to know anything, there is no real need for me to memorize it, I just have to remember a pointer to where I can find that info in the future.
This of course allows waaaay more information for me to try to keep track of - or rather the pointers.
I attribute that to my constant desire to sleep.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
#1 - People were just as empty and banal before they got cellphones, but now they're talking about it so you can hear them.
...
#2 - Some other factor, not owning a cell phone, causes children with cell phones to do worse in school; I recall a study showing that sexually active teenagers do worse in school (now I can't find it). Sex doesn't make you stupid, teenagers with active sex lives get lower grades for some other reason. Personally, I've never observed much relationship between grades and intelligence, but that is another issue.
#3 - remember when we were kids? Back in the day, young people NEVER crossed against the light and then were blaze when a car almost hit them. Nope; that is one thing I can say with confidence never happened ever.
Absolutely no scientific basis in this
but it still seems true
Here's my prejudice:
no scientific basis = seems false.
It's a simple rule that prevents me from believing that aliens visit earth and give people enemas.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
What amazes me are the people who dont realize it's their phone that's ringing. During lecture once last winter, a student's phone started ringing very loudly. The prof normally ignores these, as they usually silence in about 2.4 seconds.
After about 10 secnods, he started to get annoyed. Finally, someone front row center leans over to her bookbag, and takes her sweet time shutting the phone off. The look on her face was "oh, that's my phone!"
The person was in other classes of mine that semester, and was the first of many "oh, that's me" moments. I dont think she made any attempt all term to shut off her phone in a timely manner. We all leave the ringer on every now and then and get a call, but good grief! At least make the effort to shut it off when it does!
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
I had an interesting revelation the other night. You see, I'd just gotten my cell phone. I didn't buy it; my mother did, because she wanted me to have it "so she could always get in touch if she had to". I'd previously avoided owning one, but it was free (for me). I'd also thought that it was the other people who couldn't handle using one in parallel with another process.
Anyway, my girlfriend and my mother and I were all sitting around playing Monopoly when a friend called on my cell. I answered and started to chat. It was a very light conversation, no deep thinking, but I kept playing Monopoly as I talked.
Bad move.
We played two complete turns, with my opponents landing on a property owned by me EVERY TIME. Guess what? I didn't even notice. In my mind, I was playing just as well. Of course, I was seriously mistaken. I lost something like $2000 in that short time.
I took it as a serious lesson. Before, I had "kept the talking/driving to a minimum." Now I won't EVER talk while I drive. Do cell phones make people stupid? No, but it's most certainly a distraction, "hands-free" or not, and those little details that slip one's preoccupied mind are often the most important ones.
Brandon
There are two reasons for this:
1.) Humans rely on hearing a lot more than people realize. This causes people to do stupid stuff like walk out into the street without looking. "Well, I dont hear anything, must be clear." In other words, we take hearing for granted. If you're listening to somebody on the phone, then you're not listening to stuff you typically hear.
2.) Holding a cell phone can lead to restricted head movement. You're not looking around as much. Couple that with point 1 and you start taking silly risks without even realizing it.
I'm sure people are drawing the conclusion that people burn up too much runtime while on the phone, but common sense should tell you that's not the case. Ppl talk and do stuff all the time and behave quite normally without cell phones. It's simply a matter of senses being disrupted. Use a hands-free kit and some of the problem goes away. I don't have an easy answer with the first point I made, though.
"Derp de derp."
Much of your cited data seems to be conducted during the reign of first gen cellphones -- the analog variety. These older phones operate on different frequencies (obviously) and also require a much higher power output than the digital models used by 85% American cell phone owners today. How valid are these stats?
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
I was sitting in class today and a woman's cell phone went off. It wasn't too annoying at first. Then she pulled her purse out of her backpack, and it got louder. Then she pulled the phone out of her purse, and it might as well have been a goddamn fire alarm. All in all, it took 30 seconds or so for her to turn it off, and it completely interrupted everyone's train of thought. When I see someone on a cellphone, this is the type of experience that immediately comes to mind - not the guy who I didn't even notice because he was speaking softly into his phone as I passed him on the walkway.
Think of SUVs, a good example since they've already been mentioned once in this thread. SUVs seem to carry similar connotations. Many people, myself included, see someone driving an SUV and often think "road hogging, gas guzzling, polluting idiot!" Of course that's not true in all cases. My dad's been driving an Explorer since '96 or so. He's never had a wreck in his life, he's never even had so much as a speeding ticket; he's a very safe and astute driver. Perhaps "gas guzzling" and "polluting" still apply, but he's not a road hog and he's no idiot. Yet I'm sure there are plenty of people who think that when they see him driving down the road.
It's just a stereotype. People have come to associate cellphones with rude, inconsiderate behavior (and for a good reason). They salivate when the bell rings, you can't expect anything else.
Shaun
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
Any husband who would answer otherwise seriously lacks intelligence.
No, just lacks any sense of self-esteem. Keeping a supposedly less intelligent wife around is the favorite ego boost of below average men.
What these geniuses haven't figured out is, most women can pretend to be stupid. Many do it all the time just so they don't intimidate their husbands.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
{1}, {2}, and {3} do not involve human-brain sized subjects and I therefore cast them out of hand. There is no way to measure the effect of radio waves affecting the brain with creatures that have brains far less than 1/10th our size with any hope of correlating it to humans. Remember the law of squares and how it applies to radio waves, anyone?
:-/
Wake me up when they get some primates involved in these studies.
{4} Again, I cast out of hand anyone who talks about EM efects of a pager. Pagers do not transmit, and any doctor credible to that title would have either asked someone in the field, or would have noticed the lack of radiation of the device PRIOR to testing. Truly, this person does NOT deserve a PhD title if this is the type of irresponsible trash they pump out. They should be disbarred for publishing such a study immediately before they actually do hurt someone.
{5} Measures the effects of portable phones. At the time of that study (1974) they ran in the 49 Mhz band, or maybe even lower, in the kids walkie-talkie band. This is 20x lower than many newer analog portable phones and cellphones, and nearly 50x less than that of very new 2.4 Ghz phones.
Not to even get into the studies that mentioned "the frequencies of computer monitors" as if they had even the slightest relevance to cellphones. 15 kilo-cycles is the same as 900 MEGA-cycles or 2.4 GIGA-cycles?
Give me a break.
None of these studies has relevant evidence to what you are discussing, sorry.
Try your luck next time, though.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Uh huh. And you state that with such authority, too! I almost don't think you're a tard!
None are considered credible in the scientific community.
Bzzt! Wrong. That's just what you've been told by the pretty talking heads on TEE VEE. There are two steps required to hoodwink a nation about some off-kilter science lie: a) Fund a dumb-ass study which distorts and supports, b) Fund a promotions campaign to sell the results to the public through the major media outlets, (which are mostly owned by telecommunications interests.).
There have been HUNDREDS of rational studies done by serious scientists looking to know the truth about these matters. Hundreds, done by such unreliable groups as the American military in conjunction with the New York department responsible for supplying Manhattan and the state of New York with electricty. --With damning results, which were then quickly muttered down and buried. You won't find this easily on the web. (Wonder why?) You have to, (horrors!) go look it up in a bricks and mortar library. There have been HUNDREDS of damning studies by real scientists the world over who wanted to know the truth, and who now know that there is more to the question of EM/human interaction than is sold to us by the tobacco, er I mean, the telecommunications industry. But only those $tudie$ which make $en$e to certain partie$ get the PR budgets and the media required to become de-facto truth with all the nerds and stupid people who believe the calm and rational voice from the TEE VEE which tells us all what to think.
Piece of advice: Get your head pulled out. There's shit in your ears.
Think about it. Most of the common rudness you encounter on a daily basis comes from people who simply don't think about people around them...or if they do, they regard them as obstacles. Driving aggressively, taking more than 7 items through the express checkout lane, playing stereos loudly at 3am, talking on a cell phone during a movie...all of it comes from people not considering the other people around them. And in modern culture, this is a common habit.
Cell phones don't make people stupid. They just reinforce their rude habits.
None of these studies have produced repeatable results
Not quite right. THESE result have been reproduced a lot of times. But similiar studies have been made to test if EM has the same effect on humans. Some of these human studies have proven the same effect, some have disproven them. This is where the controversy lies, but that mobile phones are bad for rats have been proven beyond any reasonable doubt.
"Tis better to be silent and thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt." -Mark Twain
> The trouble is now they're driving down the fastlane of the interstate 15 mph slower than the prevailing traffic in their rusty old black Corvettes forcing others to pass them on the right while they yack away in total oblivion of everything around them. True story.
Rusty Corvettes? True story?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
You have to listen to these conversations.
"Yes
It's not the sound of stupidity, it's the sound of blokes' dignity whimpering softly, circling the drain.