Hyperconnectivity from constant smartphone use can negatively impact brain function and behavior in several ways. Checking phones an average of 88 times per day activates the brain's reward system through dopamine releases from random notifications and updates. This conditions users to continue checking compulsively. Additionally, frequent task-switching required by multitasking hinders deep thinking and has costs to attention, focus, memory, and error rates compared to single-task focus. Making conscious changes like taking regular breaks, batching similar tasks, and creating offline periods can help overcome these impacts.

1. A handy little helper?
Or a pain in the *ss for knowledge workers?
Alan Veys, Psychologist & Educational Technologist @ Vives
My smartphone
What is hyperconnectivity doing to my brain?

2. • Who has a smartphone?
• What do you use it for?
Go to www.menti.com
and use the code 51 08 0
Or scan the QR code
• How often do you check
your smartphone?
And what do you check?
• => Now turn off your
smartphones please
Some questions to start

3. If I ask you to turn off your smartphone, what
would be the consequences?
• What would you feel?
• Fear of being offline (FOBO)?
• Fear of missing out (FOMO)?
• Fear of missing information (FOMI)?
• Nomophobia? (No Mobile Phobia)
What do you see in the movie?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
OINa46HeWg8
Let’s take a walk on the wild side and
do an experiment…

4. • Give you insight in/awareness of your own
smartphone (SP) use
• What are the consequences of being online all the
time?
And maybe…
when you are convinced…
that you want to change your SP use…
 What can you/we do about it?
Tips & tricks
Aim of this workshop

5. Smartphone use: some figures (Menthal project)
• How often do you use your smartphone a day?
Average 88 times a day (Markowitz, 2016)
• Why do we check our SP?
35 to check the hour or to check if we have messages
53 for interaction: apps, mails, surfing, …
Not exclusively youngsters ( 17-25year olds: check 100x/day)
• With what frequency do you check your smartphone?
Average: every 18 min. (25% of the respondents gets to every 14
min)
Reported use is often underestimated

6. Smartphone use: some figures (Menthal project)
• How many hours do you use your smartphone a day?
Average 2,5h (youngsters 3h)
Only 7 min. Day for calling
Online 10 min a day for handy apps like train, bank, carsharing, etc
Biggest part is SM like FB (15 min), Instagram (5 min), What’s app (35
min), games (30 min) and messengers…

7. We are always online/hyperconnected: Checking FB, what’s
app, Messenger, news sites, Tinder, mail, etc
Deep down we know it cannot be good/healthy, but ‘it’s
stronger then ourselves’.
This big use is not normal so why do we do it?
Can you explain why you use your smartphone 53x/day?
• Not rational so must be irrational/subconsious processes
Result

10. • Conditioning: random rewards
• 3 basic needs
Psychological mechanisms @ the base

11. Why do people stay in Casino’s, playing a one-armed
bandit all day?

12. • Dopamine
• = happiness hormone: stimulates,motivates and keeps us alert
• When we are looking/hoping for a reward:
dopamine is being produced
• When we get a reward: more dopamine produced
• Random rewards makes our behavior continue (cfr Skinner:
operant conditioning)
• So why?
When checking our smartphones, we get a dose of happiness
When we find a reward=> even more dopamine is produced
Conditioning/Random rewards

13. Most succesfull sites/apps are
using this knowledge
• Facebook updates our newsfeed
• Instagram or twitter are offering us different pictures
• Newssites update their homepage every hour
• We are being motivated by dopamine
(and not by the content of the information we find/seek)

14. Are we addicted like
these gamblers?
Do I have a problem?
Take the 20 questions
Nomophobia test

15. So what rewards are we looking for in
these timelines? => 3 basis needs
• Rewards of the tribe/social rewards
We are social creatures. With every
post we wander how much social
confirmation we will get
• Rewards of the hunt
We are not hunting for food
anymore, but our hunting instincts
remain
• Rewards of the self
The feeling of having control over
the situation or being proud of
yourself

16. So what rewards are we looking for in
these timelines? => 3 basis needs
• a post with 4 likes makes us less
happy then a post with 100+ likes
• Ibood, 1 day fly, groupon,
tweedehands.be, Tinder, …
• E.g. easy games like Candy crush or
organising our mailbox
• => needs combined: we check our
inbox because sometimes (random
reward) we find something
interesting and important. Social
effect of communicating, finding
advantages, organising mailbox
(opening, moving, deleting, …)

17. • Always on
• Easily accesible
• Information rich
• Interactive
• Not only for humans (The internet of things)
• Continuously registrating
• => This trend will become more visible in the near future.
Are we prepared?
We are living in a hyperconnected world

20. IFTTT

22. What is the impact on our focus and attention?

23. What happens if we are constantly on-line?
• Multitasking and the cost of Task switching
• Low stress levels
• No more breaks
• Other
But first: how our brain works
…
3 Brainsystems

24. • Thinking Brain (Sum ergo cogito)
• Conscious reflection, analytical thinking, synthesing,
creativity, problemsolving, anticipating, reflecting on the
past, deep thinking, long term planning and goal setting,
proactive
• Unique for humans
• Needs constant attention and concentration
• Uses a lot of energy, easily tired
• Slow
• Only 1 thought at a time (serial processing: see the cost of
multitasking)
Reflecting brain/goal driven

26. • Oldest system (evolutionary)
• Subconscious, unaware, autonomous
• Conclusions based on here and now (senses)
• Reactive (not able to be proactive or reflect)
• Fast (reflex), works with shortcuts in the brain
• Uses very little energy
• Part of this system is the affect-netwerk
• Reacts to new stimuli like smells, images and mainly sounds
and can disrupt the work of the other brains
• Produces dopamine to investigate a new stimulus
Reflex brain/ stimulus driven

27. • Classifies and archives all incoming stimuli
• in long term memory
• Is being archived in a associative way
• Most active when no task has to be done: in breaks (even only
minutes), while sleeping, …
• Competes with reflecting brain (RB) for working memory:
when RB is working, AB cannot
Archiving brain

29. What happens if we are constantly on-line?
• Multitasking and the cost
of Task switching
• Low stress levels
• Other

30. • Take your watch, a pen and a piece of paper
• Write down the word and then the numbers
M U L T I T A S K I N G
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
• Stop the clock and write down your time
The cost of MULTITASKING

31. • Take your watch, a pen and a NEW piece of paper
• Write down the M and then the number 1, then the U and the
number 2, then the L and the number 3 etc till the end
M U L T I T A S K I N G
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Stop the clock and write down your time
• Avg + 50% for a very small task.
Imagine the cost for complex tasks!
The cost of MULTITASKING

32. • Case in the supermarket
• We think we multitask all the time
e.g. when we are handling our e-mails during a meeting
But we are task-switching
Why is this hard? Context-switching costs enery !
• Task 1 => task 2 : stopt task 1, move data from task 1 from working
memory to temporary memory, clean working memory, retrieve
data from LT memory and put in temporary or working memory,
build concentration
• This takes time!
Cost? Impact on intellectual productivity?

33. Time
• On average, we need 2 min to recover our previous
attention level after a 30 sec interruption
• Loss is bigger for an external stimulus (e.g.. pop-up)
• Loss is bigger when immediate action is requiered
(phone call vs e-mail)
• Incoming messages unrelated to the task have bigger
impact
Cost? Impact on intellectual productivity?

34. Accuracy
• Working memory can only contain 7 chuncks on average
• The more you switch, the more you forget/ the more mistakes
you make (some remains of the first task stay in the working
memory)
• FIFO: old tasks are being overwritting by new ones
• Multitasking is only effective for easy and routinous tasks
where accuracy (and quality) is not requiered.
• Info gets lost if we don’t take a brake (archiving brain do it’s
job)
Cost? Impact on intellectual productivity?

35. Bram & Bart

36. • Hyperconnectivity => Chronic stress
• Our body cannot recover
• Chemicals that can be life-safing in a dangourous situation
become toxic when they are being produced continously
• Local stress in eyes, neck, shoulders, back,…
Consequence 2: low stress levels

38. Other consequences: traffic

39. Other consequences: safety

40. • October 2011 Blackberry fail in Arabic Emirates: 40% less
traffic accidents
• Risk of accidents x4 – x8 while calling
• Watching a tekst = 5 sec eyes of the road @ 100 km/h =
110 meter not watching the road = 1 soccerfield
• Calling slows down our reaction speed with 20-90%
@70 km/h = 4,5 to 18m
Some figures

41. Other consequences
• Loneliness?
• Emotional exhausted
• Digital burn-out
• …

42. • We are knowledge workers: attention =
highest good
• Our work requires focus and attention
• We get distracted by phone calls, e-mails, sms,
chats, people coming over, …
• => every distraction has effect on attention
and concentration, so on our efficiëncy and
effectiveness.
And also on our emotional state and mental
energy
Our SP: a weapon of mass distraction

43. What can I do about it?

44. • Who had ever checked his/her SP @ the toilet?
• Who used breaks between lessons, before meetings, etc to
check your SP?
• Our archiving brain needs breaks. The archiving brain needs to
organise new input and make connections during rest-time
• Sometimes a night of sleep can solve a problem or give yoy
new insights
• Idle time is essential for brain workers
Make time for breaks

45. Archimedes law

46. Newtons law

48. Does this sound anti-tech?

49. Some evidence to back this up
• Digital leaders are
kicking-off from their
digital addiction in
silicon valley
• Detox camps and
digital diets
• Blogs with print
screens of almost no
apps on your phone

50. • We use our SP for working, info gathering,
producing,…
• But SP’s were never designed for this
• E.g. quick e-mail check
-> can’t do it now, small screen
-> leave unread in inbox
= time lost
What where SP’s designed for?

51. Your smartphone is not the problem
It’s how you use it

52. • New technology so
normal that we’re
searching
• What do you think you
can do about is?
• Tips are not proven,
best effort in uncertain
domain
What can you do
about it?

53. 1. War: Eat when you can (very little supply and expensive
food)
2. 60-70: mass production of food. You can eat unlimited, fat
and unhealty food ready available
=> we eat more then we need
3. 70-80: First diets. We know fat to be unhealthy. First strategy:
do not eat fat, etc
4. Now: healthy food is ready available. Strategy 1 is not
sufficient => Low-carb, paleo, bio-vegan,…
Stages of change: e.g. Fat

54. 1. Low supply: only 1 rule
E.g. eat what you can
2. Oversupply of food: basic rules are developping
E.g. Do not eat unhealty food
3. Oversupply of healthy food: need for adapted rules
Applied on information and entertainment
• 80’s: only few TV channels, expensive VCR cassettes and early computer
games complicated
• 90: movies become cheaper, bigger supply, DVD’s, pay-tv, playstation,…
We can choose and not watch/play what we do not find interesting
• 00: oversupply: pay-tv, blue ray, dvd, you-tube, netflix,… You can watch
24/7 on any device and never see it all
Diet as a cultural technique

55. • The same thing happens for information (cost)
telegram (1 day labour) – letter/telephone/telegram (expensice so
limited) –fax - paying sms – email&what’s app (free)
• We have arrived in the 3 stage but are still using strategies from
stage 2
There are to many good movies-series-etc and not watching the
bad is nog working anymore.
We have yet to make the step to think about the quality of our
communication. One-size-fits-all will not do
Diet as a cultural technique

56. • Go completely offline a couple of times a
day.
• Stop multitasking, start right tasking.
Batch process your mails etc
• Take a break after every batch
• Don’t mail, app,check your SP in ‘lost
moments’: break and connect
• Don’t start your day with e-mails if you have
important, difficult or creative brainwork to
do
What could I do about it?

58. • Remove all temptation that lures you to your inbox
(visual, auditory, don’t use your inbox as a to do –list)
• Use the rule of 3
When more then 3 mails have been exchanged about
a subject (or you expect this), use the phone or a
conversation to come to a conclusion
• Use qualitative communication e.g. Use ‘cc’ and ‘to’
correctly. Information is the new fat
• Take enough sleep
• Let technology help you
What can I do about it?

59. • Off time
• My Time
• Flipd
• Digital Detox
• Do not disturb-tool (Apple)
• Forest
• Focus lock
• …
• More info on this site or google ‘digital detox’
Usefull apps

60. • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7dLU6fk9QY
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRl8EIhrQjQ
Uitsmijter voor studenten: Wordsmith

61. Meer weten?