CELULAR FAZ MAL? O QUE A NEUROCIÊNCIA DIZ | Claudia Feitosa-Santana

What is the impact of cell phone use on our brain and our body? Which scientific evidence that we have? Is the cell phone bad for us?

The internet is celebrating 50 years, but it started entering our homes 25 years ago, and about ten years that we carry it with us, inside our cell phones - which is the famous smartphone (celular). I think the first question that is disturbing us nowadays is if people can really get addicted to the smartphone, and the conclusion is Yes! The dependence on smartphone will change our behaviour and will change how our brain works, like the other addictions.

So, we know that there is the danger of developing cell phone addiction, and it has an official name "NoMoFobia" which is no mobile phobia, the fear of being without the cell phone. And the fear of running out of cell phone leads to another behaviour called hikikomori - which is a Japanese term that means severe social withdrawal. There is a very recent study that was done with 60 young people, 18 to 30 years old, healthy, but who all declared themselves dependent on the cell phone.

What this study did? They decided to analyze the these people's brains in two networks, two brain networks, which are precisely the networks that we see that are altered in people who have addiction problem, but look - these people were healthy and they only said they were dependent on cell phones. And what was the conclusion?

That is in this group these two networks were also changed, indicating yes! we can get addicted to the smartphone. But what we don't know is whether the cell phone causes the brain disorder or if the person that already has a propensity or these altered networks that gets hooked on the cellphone.

We do not know because the cell phone is something very new in our lives, and science didn't have time enough to know exactly the consequences over time. Here, in fact, it is worth the warning. As we don't know, we need to be careful .

. . and everyone who has a family history of addiction should be more careful, but who doesn't have someone in the family addicted to something?

And it's worth remembering what that TV and the screens of computer brought into our life. An increase in sedentary lifestyle, but along with that one of the best hypotheses that explains the gigantic increase in myopia among us. .

. is the exposure time in front of TV and screens in general and, with the use of cell phones, there is a danger of increasing even more the number of myopia. There is an interesting research that studied the brain drain hypothesis.

What did they do? They tested a few hundred American students to verify if the mere presence of the smartphone could drain the reasoning ability that in science, we call cognitive ability. And what did they do?

They tested these students in three conditions: 1- the cell phone on the table, 2- the cell phone inside the backpack, and 3- the cell phone in another classroom. What was the conclusion? That the closer the cell phone, the bigger this brain drain, and, moreover, the greater the student dependency, the worse the reasoning ability.

. . A study that has just been published, with 265 Chinese, found that the greater the dependence on cell phone in the first year of college, the greater the chances of having problems with depression and anxiety in the third year of college.

However, the students who presented this scenario in the first year and received assistance during the second year. . .

the chances of having problems with depression and anxiety have been greatly reduced. A Japanese study with almost 500 students, also in college, shows that young men prefer to stay online playing games and females prefer to browse on social networks. And this helps us understand why that girls and women who spend more time on the social network are more likely to have problems with depression and anxiety.

We have hundreds of studies evaluating depression and anxiety but when we get them all together to be analyzed, which is what we call meta-analysis, we get to the following conclusion: 1 in 4 children and 1 in 4 young people will have problems with cell phones and, these problems,are not only with depression or anxiety, but also with stress and sleep problems. . .

and speaking of sleep, the more you use your cell phone at night the greater the chances of worsening your sleep because it deregulates the production of the sleep hormone and there are lots of youth who uses apps to filter the light in order to not disrupt this hormone production, but what we know is that these filters don't work very well. Another question that, in general, people have questions, is whether the use of cell phone can cause brain tumor and the answer is: It seems not! Because two large-scale studies, one in Denmark and another in the United States, show that the number of brain cancer over the years remains stable and if talking on the cell phone really caused these cancer those numbers should have increased.

But can it cause a headache? The answer is yes! but not for everyone.

The chances of headache increase for those who talk a lot on cell phones and for who has a bad posture using it. So, what about muscle pain? Posture is essential, to avoid headache and to avoid muscle pain, and especially in the neck and on the back.

So, what is the ideal posture? All the studies indicate that the ideal posture for using the cell phone is from 0 to 15 degrees. But most people tilt much more than 15 degrees.

In addition, using the cell phone standing is less likely to develop muscle pain than sitting because, in general, in the sitting position people have a worse posture. Moreover, these muscle pains, when installed, they can develop to a condition called skeletal muscle disorder, which is much more difficult to treat. But, again, because the smartphone is something very new in our lives, we can't talk about chronic use and the consequences decades from now.

After all, how many years do we use the cell phone? But we have to remember and, mainly, for the children, that the moving body is healthy. So, cell phone use cannot replace activity on the go.

And the question that most afflicts people lately is whether the cell phone impacts the quality of our relationships, dating, friendship, parents and children. . .

and it seems a very obvious question, because we feels that it gets in the way, but even so, we have scientific evidence for it. One group monitored 174 millennials, 5 times a day, for an entire week. What did they check?

That when the person is divided between the presence of someone and the cell phone, (s)he felt more disconnected than when it was just with the person. The title of this study is very interesting "put the phone down" which is the same as saying "don't take your cell phone to the table". This study along with the study that I have mentioned before, that the closer the phone the worse the cognition, tells us that when you go to meet someone, the ideal thing is that you don’t have your cell phone around.

. . at a dining table do not have the phone on the table .

. . because in general people pick up the phone without even realizing it.

There is no doubt that the cell phone brings gigantic benefits, and we can say that the cell phone brings a revolution to our lives and an improvement, which can be compared to the invention of writing, where, both in writing and on mobile phone, we have an active form of interaction, different from television and radio, which was passive. With the cell phone, we we can be close to who is extremely far. With the cell phone, we we create various forms of collective intelligence.

But these studies all say we need to use the cell phone for our benefit and not being dominated by it, and it’s worth continuing attentive to what scientists will tell us. we are already digital beings and what we need is to make sure that we are digital with awareness. Guys, all references that I mentioned here in this video and some more are in the description.

If you think everyone has a problem with their cell phone, minus you, leave one comment here for us and subscribe to Casa do Saber Channel.