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.
(Photo courtesy of WTAM 1100's Carmen Angelo)
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