What does this have to do with smartphones? The University of Waterloo researchers followed the smartphone habits of 660 people and discovered a pretty frightening thing. When they excluded using the phone for pure entertainment purposes, such as streaming a movie, they noticed that the more people used their mobile devices, the more likely they were to rely on intuitive thinking. This was particularly true for those who used their smartphones to access search engines. The more analytical thinkers in the study were far less likely than others to use their smartphone's search engine.
Basically, what the University of Waterloo study reveals is that the more heuristic thinkers used their phone to replace their brain. If they couldn't remember a phone number, or the name of an actress, or any other tidbit of information, they'd look it up immediately. They wouldn't try to think it through or reason it out. They were happy to have someone else tell them the answer. Analytical thinkers didn't use the smartphone that way. They took the time to retrieve the information from their brains, or at least think it through before checking.
"The fear is when we come across a problem we can't Google. You get used to having easy answers. Once you get used to it you won't persevere." If you don't persevere, you don't think through the problem cognitively and you come to a bad answer.
One way to limit the cognitive effects of aging is to keep the mind fresh with new challenges and hard thinking. If you take that away, we might not age very well as our brains turn to mush from smartphone use (my words, not his).
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