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Does the Brain Drain Effect Really Exist? A Meta-Analysis

Smartphones have become an indispensable part of everyday life. Given the current debate about the use of smartphones in classrooms and schools, it seems appropriate to examine their effects on aspects of cognitive performance in more detail. Ward and colleagues not only demonstrated the negative ef...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Böttger, Tobias, Poschik, Michael, Zierer, Klaus
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10525686/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37754029
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/bs13090751
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author Böttger, Tobias
Poschik, Michael
Zierer, Klaus
author_facet Böttger, Tobias
Poschik, Michael
Zierer, Klaus
author_sort Böttger, Tobias
collection PubMed
description Smartphones have become an indispensable part of everyday life. Given the current debate about the use of smartphones in classrooms and schools, it seems appropriate to examine their effects on aspects of cognitive performance in more detail. Ward and colleagues not only demonstrated the negative effect of smartphones on cognitive performance but also showed that the mere presence of these devices can have this effect—this is known as the Brain Drain effect. In the present article, a meta-analytic approach was adopted in order to verify these findings. Here we show a significant overall negative effect of smartphone use and presence. In a database search we identified 22 studies with a total of 43 relevant effects that could be assigned to the categories “memory”, “attention”, and “general cognitive performance”. A subgroup analysis suggests that not all cognitive domains are equally affected by the negative effect of smartphones. The heterogeneity of the effects reinforces this finding. The nationality of the test subjects or the origin of the studies was identified as a further key variable. Our findings also indicate that the distracting effect of smartphones varies on the area studies and further research is necessary. In view of the present research results, it seems important that people in general, and especially children and adolescents in schools and classrooms, learn how to deal with the distracting potential of smartphones.
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spelling pubmed-105256862023-09-28 Does the Brain Drain Effect Really Exist? A Meta-Analysis Böttger, Tobias Poschik, Michael Zierer, Klaus Behav Sci (Basel) Review Smartphones have become an indispensable part of everyday life. Given the current debate about the use of smartphones in classrooms and schools, it seems appropriate to examine their effects on aspects of cognitive performance in more detail. Ward and colleagues not only demonstrated the negative effect of smartphones on cognitive performance but also showed that the mere presence of these devices can have this effect—this is known as the Brain Drain effect. In the present article, a meta-analytic approach was adopted in order to verify these findings. Here we show a significant overall negative effect of smartphone use and presence. In a database search we identified 22 studies with a total of 43 relevant effects that could be assigned to the categories “memory”, “attention”, and “general cognitive performance”. A subgroup analysis suggests that not all cognitive domains are equally affected by the negative effect of smartphones. The heterogeneity of the effects reinforces this finding. The nationality of the test subjects or the origin of the studies was identified as a further key variable. Our findings also indicate that the distracting effect of smartphones varies on the area studies and further research is necessary. In view of the present research results, it seems important that people in general, and especially children and adolescents in schools and classrooms, learn how to deal with the distracting potential of smartphones. MDPI 2023-09-11 /pmc/articles/PMC10525686/ /pubmed/37754029 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/bs13090751 Text en © 2023 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Review
Böttger, Tobias
Poschik, Michael
Zierer, Klaus
Does the Brain Drain Effect Really Exist? A Meta-Analysis
title Does the Brain Drain Effect Really Exist? A Meta-Analysis
title_full Does the Brain Drain Effect Really Exist? A Meta-Analysis
title_fullStr Does the Brain Drain Effect Really Exist? A Meta-Analysis
title_full_unstemmed Does the Brain Drain Effect Really Exist? A Meta-Analysis
title_short Does the Brain Drain Effect Really Exist? A Meta-Analysis
title_sort does the brain drain effect really exist? a meta-analysis
topic Review
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10525686/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37754029
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/bs13090751
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