Impacts of cellphone use on different parts of the brain

Impacts of cellphone use on different parts of the brain

How much do smartphones impact our brain?

Cerebral Cortex

Parietal lobe

Frontal lobe

Occipital lobe

Temporal lobe

Parietal lobe

What is the partietal lobe? This part of the brain focuses on sensory processing, meaning, the way your brain recieves and responds to sensory information such as touch and smell.

Attention

Sensory overload

Excessive exposure on cell phones to notifications, texts, games, etc. can interrupt your focus and force the brain to rapidly work to peocess the information and can exhaust the parietal lobe, making it more difficult to focus and pay attentuon.

Social media and other websites used on cell phones and other devices exposes the brain to immoderate amounts of information. This can be from physical sources that causes your brain to work harder in order to understand something or from the visuals and light reflecting off your device (blue light). This frequent use could lead to irritability, tiredness, stress, etc.

The parietal lobe is used to process information such as visual and auditory.

Occipital lobe

What is the occipital lobe? The occipital lobe is also known as the "vision center", it observes and processes visual signals.

Facial recognition

Disfunctional

The occipital lobe is located all the way in the back of your skull, and is the smallest lobe of your brain.

Frequent cell phone usage can negatively impact facial recognition because it diverts attention away from the natural environment, making it harder for your brain to identify familiar faces.

If the occipital lobe is damaged on both sides, people won't be able to process visual signals or recognize stimuli. Excessive cell phone usage can damage the occipital lobe.

Neck strain

Overstimulation

Using a cell phone for a long period of time can overstimulate the visual system, which is processed in the occipital lobe.

Excessive cell phone use can mean straining one's neck while frequently on their phones. This could potentially lead to Occipital Neuralgia, a rare condition where the occipital nerves are injured from excessive neck strain or a pinched nerve.

The occipital lobe is the visual processor. It is related to distance and depth perception, memory function and visual recognition.

Cerebral Cortex

What is the cerebral cortex? The outer layer of your brain that carries out processes such as memory, emotions and consciousness.

Cell phones can lead to negative emotions such as anxiety or depression.

Phone usage can negatively impact cognitive ability

Excessive screen time can cause thinning of the cerebral cortex and may also affect the cerebral cortex's growth while your brain develops.

Continuous use of cell phones can affect cognitive ability and the ability to solve problems. The brain is used to receiving superficial or basic information but with the use of cell phones (and multitasking during use), the brain has to become accustomed to receiving more complex or mentally challenging information.

The cerebral cortex is related to processing emotion, and using cell phones (and specifically social media) can lead to comparing oneself to others online which can lead to these negative emotions.

The cerebral cortex helps with decision-making, and with the excessive use of cell phones (especially relating to social media), it can negatively impact decision making through overloading the brain with information such as mindlessly scrolling through social media.

Temporal lobe

What is the temporal lobe? This part of your brain helps use your senses to understand your environments and helps you to communicate.

The temporal lobe is important for creating and holding long-term memories

People with cell phone addictions have less activity in the temporal region when completing tasks.

While using a cell phone, blood flow in the inferior temporal cortex can signficiantly decrease.

Radio frequency and microwave energy are absorbed into certain areas of the temporal lobe when using a cell phone.

Frequent cell phone use (especially with multitasking) can impact the brain's ability to store new information which can weaken your memory abilities.

Frontal lobe

What is the frontal lobe? The frontal lobe is the front part of the brain, and it's responsible for how you remember things, how you move, and controls the way you think.

Expressive aprosodia

Prefrontal Cortex

Excessive cell phone usage can cause a decrease in functionality of the right frontal lobes

• People who use their cell phones less are more likely to experience better cognitive functions in their everyday lives
• Through texting more than communicating face-to-face it causes a lack of expressional aspects that one uses in communication and could potentially damage brain function

A neurological disorder caused by the absence of speech or other basic motor functions like face-to-face communication.

Can be associated with changes in right prefrontal cortex and your attention span