The Texas Tech men’s basketball team was banned from using smartphones to help players focus on their upcoming championship run, which highlights how smartphones can turn people into zombies incapable of achieving their potential.

The team initially banned smartphones after a three-game losing streak in February, when one player suggested that the team turn over their devices before bed while on the road.

And since the ban, the team has only lost one game, which underscores the impact smartphones can have on people who are encouraged to use them excessively.

“Just to be able to get away from it, just live in the moment, feels great,” Texas Tech forward Tariq Owens told Time Magazine. “I know this for a fact, not a lot of teams would be happy about it. This is the kind of culture we have. Guys don’t care about it.”

“We’re locked into more important things than cell phones.”

Case in point, a Australian survey published in March suggested that people are suffering from “technoference,” which refers to the problems linked to obsessive smartphone use, including a lack of sleep, productivity and an increase in anxiety.

According to the survey:

…Problematic or excessive mobile phone use refers to an individual’s inability to control their usage of their mobile phone which, in turn, leads to adverse consequences in their everyday life. On a personal level, such consequences may relate to financial problems, sleep disturbances, attentional and learning impairments in educational settings, excessive sedentary behavior, and the deterioration of personal relationships.

Other studies came to similar conclusions, including one study which found that children are spending twice as long on smartphones and tablets as they are talking to their own parents face-to-face.

Another study by San Diego State University said that people born in 1995 and after “spend a lot more time online, on social media and playing games, and they spend less time on non-screen activities like reading books, sleeping or seeing their friends in face-to-face interactions.”

“Those children are growing up more slowly,” reported France 24. “By the age of 18, they are less likely to have a driver’s licence, to work in a paying job, to go out on dates, to drink alcohol or to go out without their parents compared to teens in previous generations.”



Brian Stelter is famous for complaining too much.

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