According to recent research, the average adult now spends four hours a day staring at their smartphone (Moment, 2018). This affects a surprising range of life elements and cognitive skills, from sleep time and quality of relationships to short- and long-term memory, attention span, creativity, productivity, problem-solving and decision-making abilities.
More alarming for the average smartphone user is the fact that using the device raises our level of cortisol, the body’s main stress hormone. This can lead to increases in blood pressure, heart rate and blood sugar.
But there is a simple solution! Read more print! Whether it’s a newspaper, magazine, catalogue or book, print has been proven to improve the health of its readers.
The scientific evidence to support this fact can be viewed in the full article on the Two Sides website. It goes on to say that neurological studies have shown that brain activity when reading print is significantly different to when reading from a screen. When reading digital content, the brain skims across the copy, only taking in key words or highlighted or bold text. But reading in print stimulates visual memory, improving understanding, retention and retrieval of information. As importantly, reading print helps you have longer and better quality of sleep.
So… don’t let your phone drain your brain, give print a chance!