Technology has changed the world, but now it’s also changing our brains.
A study published in the journal, Addictive Behaviors, suggests that smartphone addiction changes your brain’s grey matter in a way similar to drug addiction. The size and shape of that region of your brain actually changes in shape and size.
How important is grey matter? It controls a person’s emotions, speech, sight, hearing, memory and self-control.
Here’s where we are headed by the numbers: In the U.S., over 24-percent of kids from eight to 12 years old have their own smartphone and 67-percent of their teenage counterparts do, with younger teenagers using an average of about six hours’ worth of entertainment media daily.
If you want to get a handle on your family’s smartphone use, Apple and Android both have features to manage screen time and there are apps like Moments and Freedom.
Source:USA Today