"Smartphone use takes about the same cognitive toll as losing a full night's sleep"

What does this even mean? Does it mean your cognitive performance after using a smartphone daily is reduced to the level it would be at if you hadn't slept at all the previous night? Does it mean cumulative smartphone use is as harmful as cumulatively skipping a full night's sleep? (Which is clearly false, but to me sounds like the most natural interpretation of the author's statement.) Is it about your cognitive performance right after getting off your phone, or does it still apply if you last used your phone several hours ago?

But given the lack of citation, I will follow you in assuming that it's false.

That quote frustrated me too. "Smartphone use" is such a vague term here.

They seem to reference this again later in the article, but it doesn't seem to clear things up much.

"All that distraction adds up to a loss of raw brain power. Workers at a British company who multitasked on electronic media – a decent proxy for frequent smartphone use – were found in a 2014 study to lose about the same quantity of IQ as people who had smoked cannabis or lost a night's sleep."

That's some serious spin. What the fuck is "multitasked on electronic media"? Where they employed at a firm where they switched from data entry to looking up stuff? I worked at a firm where people did that and yea it would look like their brain power reduced, because it was a terrible shit job (debt collection). They'd have to go from data entry, to calls to skip tracking lookups.

Depending on the type of work, that's not at all "a decent proxy." That's the kind of bullshit you read in meta-analysis papers. (Tip: if the introduction says its a meta-analysis, chuck that paper in the bin .. and set the bin on fire. Most meta-analysis papers are just lazy. You cannot control in vastly different experiments).

I agree a lot of this is FUD. Media has always been used to manipulate people. Emotional manipulation grew massively during the Edward Bernays era (the father of smoking advertisements and creating political and/or emotional draw to products). It may have changed form from Print to Radio to TV to phones, but it's still just more of the same manipulation.

Even worse, I'm old enough to remember how the Time cover story on "cyber porn" [1] indirectly led to the introduction of bad legislation [2].

Reporting like this can have serious consequences.

[1] https://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19950703,00.htm...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Decency_Act

The site linked to is one of the worst places on the internet for actual news/facts. I won't take this seriously until someone provides links to a reputable site.

David Rock cites a very very similar fact in "Your Brain at Work."

I only have the audiobook currently or else I'd quote directly, but the gist is that distractions from overcommunication temporarily drop IQs an average of 10 points: 5 for women, 15 for men, supposedly. The study originally revolved around email, and presumably text/sms/chat in the 13 years since the study).

Interestingly, following up on the quote he gave led me to this blog with an exchange [1] between the blog author and the original study author.

[1] http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002493.h...

I'm pretty sure it's referred to later in the article:

>All that distraction adds up to a loss of raw brain power. Workers at a British company who multitasked on electronic media – a decent proxy for frequent smartphone use – were found in a 2014 study to lose about the same quantity of IQ as people who had smoked cannabis or lost a night's sleep.

Still not a reference, but you could probably find the study given that information if you wanted to. Or I'm sure the author would respond if you tweeted and asked him or something. If you really want to find out I'm sure it's possible.

What matters is that it ressonates with a common oppinion that smart phones are bad, so as long as it supports that somewhat popular position it doesn't need to be checked.

We all have biases, and in fact I don't use a smart phone because of some of the issues I have noticed using one previously, but if truth matters to you, you cannot just accept stuff just because you agree with it.

It means that if you are using your phone while driving, you are at just as much increased risk of incurring an accident as if you had not slept the previous night. Right, folks?