Are smartphones making us stupid?

• Author: Keen, Andrew
• Position: Debate

Sixty-four percent of Americans own smartphones, according to a recent survey. Among young people, the number is even higher: 85 percent. We carry them everywhere and use them for everything from getting directions to watching videos. But some believe that constant connectivity and easy access to dizzying amounts of information is not without drawbacks. Two technology experts face off on the effect these ubiquitous devices are having on our brains.

YES The idea that smartphones are making us stupid might, at first, sound a little absurd. After all, that iPhone or Samsung Galaxy in your pocket is actually an incredibly sophisticated networked computer and camera with the power to immediately connect with anyone around the world. You could write a novel, edit a movie, or solve a complex math problem on this magical device.

But, of course, you aren't writing novels, editing movies, or solving complex math problems with your smartphone. Instead, you're using your incredibly sophisticated pocket computer to Tweet the details of what you just ate, check updates on Facebook, and post your disappearing Snapchat photos from last night's school dance. Then there's all those WhatsApp instant messages you so need to send each hour to your girlfriend or boyfriend and all those selfies a collective 93 million a day in 2014--that you post daily on Instagram.

So rather than transforming us into Albert Einstein, Steven Spielberg, or Toni Morrison, our smartphones are actually making us more wrapped up in ourselves. In the end, all we are left with is more and more intimacy with our own lives and less and less knowledge of the wider world around us.

And that, I'm afraid, is why smartphones are making us stupid.

You see, technology doesn't exist in a vacuum, independently of the world; technology is only as good as how we use it. Smartphones could, of course, make us smarter if we use them smartly. But most of us don't, because we are locked in the trivia of our own lives. Our culture lends itself to instant gratification, the trivialization of serious subjects, and, above all, what psychologists call "narcissism'-unhealthily excessive interest in oneself. Smartphones are both a cause and a consequence of our selfie-obsessed culture. Unfortunately, they are, indeed, making us dumber and dumber..

--ANDREW KEEN

Author, The Internet Is Not the Answer

NO Twenty-five years ago, before the Internet was known to everyone, if someone had advertised a "universal...