One recent report found that adults in the US check their phones, on average, 344 times a day——once every four minutes——and spend almost three hours a day on their devices in total. The problem for many of us is that one quick phone-related task leads to a quick check of our email or social media feeds, and suddenly we've been sucked into endless scrolling（滚屏）.
It's a vicious circle. The more useful our phones become, the more we use them. The more we use them, the more we lay neural pathways in our brains that lead to picking up our phones for whatever task is at hand——and the more we feel an urge to check our phone even when we don't have to.
What we do know is that the simple distraction of checking a phone or seeing a notification can have negative consequences. This isn't very surprising；we know that, in general, multitasking harms memory and performance. One of the most dangerous examples is phone use while driving.
In another recent study, researchers asked participants to either put their phones next to them so they were visible （like on a desk）, nearby and out of sight （like in a bag or pocket）, or in another room. Participants then completed a series of tasks to test their abilities to process and remember information, their problem-solving, and their focus. They were found to perform far better when their phones were in another room instead of nearby——whether visible, powered on or not. That held true even though most of the participant s claimed not to be consciously（有意识地） thinking about their devices.
The mere proximity（靠近） of a phone, it seems, contributes to"brain drain" Our brains may be subconsciously hard at work in controlling the desire to check our phones, or constantly monitoring the environment to see if we should check our phone（eg, waiting for a notification）. Either way, this diverted attention can make doing anything else more difficult. The only"fix", the researchers found, was putting the device in a different room entirely.
