Are Smart Phones Inhibiting Smartness? Smart Phone Presence, Mobile Phone Anxiety, and Cognitive Performance

Abstract

In recent years, increased smart phone ownership and usage has resulted in nomophobia, or anxiety experienced when away from a smart phone.  Compulsive smart phone usage has been shown to interfere with task productivity. Therefore, in the current study we predicted that individuals who have their smart phone removed during a cognitive task will experience more anxiety and worsened performance than those who kept their phones during the task.  Undergraduates completed a word search that acted as the cognitive task, and completed measures of compulsive usage and anxiety. Results did not support our hypothesis. However, implications discussed show that future studies could be beneficial to understanding how smart phones are changing our cognitive performance, especially in regards to academics.