Table of ContentsIntroductionLiterature ReviewConclusionReferences:IntroductionAlong with other technological advancements, smartphones have become an integral part of modern people's lives. It is estimated that smartphone owners interact with their phones an average of 85 times per day, including immediately upon waking up, just before going to sleep, and even in the middle of the night. 91% say they never leave the house without their phone. 46% say they could not live without a smartphone. At the University of Texas at Austin, much research has highlighted the negative effects of smartphone use, but new evidence suggests that smartphones damage cognitive abilities even when not in use. It turns out that the mere presence of smartphones near peripheral view could have some pretty serious cognitive consequences. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay Additionally, as Fran Molloy wrote in her article “Smartphones Are Making Us Stupid – and May Be a ‘Gateway Drug’,” some parents are buying electronic devices in the hopes that their children will learn to become more technologically advanced and help them learn school material more easily. However, smartphones and tablets do the opposite and reduce “children’s cognitive abilities in measurable ways” (Molloy). On top of that, smartphones are “linked to reduced social interaction, insufficient sleep, poor real-world navigation, and depression” (Molloy). So the purpose of this essay is to analyze the effects of smartphones on a person's cognitive abilities. Literature Review According to Barr, Pennycook, Stolz, and Fugelsang (2015), researchers stated that smartphones will cause a person to have less analysis and intuitive thinking skills when faced with problems that require them to use their reasoning skills. Researchers conducted three studies in this research which proved that participants with high level of smartphone usage have low heuristic thinking ability for the first study followed by the second study which includes the study between higher smartphone usage leading to participants' poor reasoning skills as an alternative explanation. The third study includes investigating the association between higher smartphone usage and participants' lower academic performance. Evidence to support this claim In the first study to investigate the association between smartphone use and heuristic thinking, results show that participants who had a high level of smartphone use performed worse to questions of cognitive style. That is, prolonged smartphone use may lead to an increase in cognitive miserliness because participants tend to apply heuristic thinking when using their smartphone. The second study, which investigated the association between smartphone use and reasoning skills, showed that participants who had a high level of smartphone usage had lower cognitive ability. Namely, using smartphones as information sources will make users lose the ability to ask reasoning questions, because according to researchers, smartphone users offload their thinking by relying on information sources external, because smartphones are used easily. The third study which investigates the association between