A study conducted by Stanford on people's smartphone addiction had extremely interesting results, which put a little perspective on the way we use our mobile phones. The researchers of the prestigious university claim that smartphone screens stimulate the same parts of the brain as drugs that are part of the opioid class, or cannabis.
The results were brought to the attention of the general public after a group of investors asked the company Apple to implement new parental control functions for the iPhone. They state that young people are extremely vulnerable to interacting with smartphones and that their development can be substantially affected by the prolonged use of smartphones in everyday life.
To be completely honest, the result will certainly generate a lot of controversy, especially since we are talking about an extremely sensitive topic at the moment in the USA. The reality is that people are addicted to smartphones and children can be affected by the exact same thing if they are not monitored well enough by their parents in the use of these gadgets.
"Smartphone screens light up the same area of the brain as opioids and cannabis. The reward pathways mediated by dopamine respond to screens in a very similar way to opioids. Adolescent brains are more vulnerable to risk taking, so the emotion centers of the brain drive behavior more than the future planning centers of the brain."
Apple has not yet announced what kind of new parental control features it intends to implement in iOS, but we can imagine that there will be some that will provide more control for parents.
