And you thought the technology used in the movie Minority Report was scary. Per The Washington Post, an Israeli tech startup called Faception is claiming that it has developed analytics software to help government agencies identify prospective terrorists, pedophiles and white-collar criminals.
The basic idea behind the startup is that human faces have multiple characteristics that are reflective of the genes that determine our personalities. Because these facial features are undetectable by human eyes, however, we need advanced software to root them out, which is where Faception comes in.
It's always good to be skeptical of tech startups, particularly when they are making claims that are this bold about their technological capabilities. Nonetheless, the Post states that Faception has "already signed a contract with a homeland security agency to help identify terrorists," so it's apparently being taken seriously by the federal government.
The potential negative implications here are pretty obvious, however. Would it really be responsible to establish surveillance on an individual just because some face-scanning software believes that they fit the general facial profile of terrorists?
"The evidence that there is accuracy in these judgments is extremely weak,” Princeton psychology professor Alexander Todorov told the Post. “Just when we thought that physiognomy ended 100 years ago. Oh, well.”
Faception CEO Shai Gilboa, who also serves as the company's chief ethics officer, tells the Post that he would never make any of the company's analyses of people's faces public. He also believes that governments shouldn't rely solely on his company's facial scanning tech to identify terrorists and should instead use it as just one of several variables.
Nonetheless, this probably won't do much to quell concerns about the technology and its implications since no one wants to have their phones bugged because of a facial recognition software glitch.
The U.S. House of Representatives voted down on Monday a measure that would have compelled cell phone carriers to disclose a phone's location with law enforcement in the event of an emergency, amid a last-minute lobbying effort from privacy advocates opposed to it.
Lawmakers voted 229-158 to pass the Kelsey Smith Act, falling short of the two-thirds threshold necessary due to rules invoked to expedite the bill’s vote.
The rejection was considered surprising, as House leadership rarely schedules a vote on legislation it is not confident will pass.
However, Civil liberties groups aggressively opposed the bill on Monday, arguing that while well intended, it would create a warrant loophole and could lead to expanded government surveillance.
R Street, a libertarian-leaning think tank, said phone companies already possess the authority to share cell phone location data in emergency situations and did so frequently, making the legislation largely unnecessary.
The bill is named after a deceased 18-year-old Kansas woman who disappeared following a visit to a local Target store in 2007. Smith was found murdered four days later only after Verizon, her cell phone provider, shared the location of her phone with authorities, according to Representative Kevin Yoder, a Kansas Republican and author of the bill.
“While I’m disappointed in tonight’s outcome, I look forward to the bill being brought back to the House floor when a simple majority vote can get it passed.” Yoder said in a statement.
Smith’s parents were in attendance in the House chamber during the vote, according to Yoder’s office.
More than 20 states have already adopted versions of the law since Smith's death.
(Reporting by Dustin Volz; Editing by Leslie Adler)
Facebook has apologized for wrongly banning a photo of plus-sized model Tess Holliday for violating its ‘health and fitness’ advertising policy
Facebook has apologized for banning a photo of a plus-sized model and telling the feminist group that posted the image that it depicts “body parts in an undesirable manner”.
Cherchez la Femme, an Australian group that hosts popular culture talkshows with “an unapologetically feminist angle”, said Facebook rejected an advert featuring Tess Holliday, a plus-sized model wearing a bikini, telling the group it violated the company’s “ad guidelines”.
After the group appealed against the rejection, Facebook’s ad team initially defended the decision, writing that the photo failed to comply with the social networking site’s “health and fitness policy".
“Ads may not depict a state of health or body weight as being perfect or extremely undesirable,” Facebook wrote. “Ads like these are not allowed since they make viewers feel bad about themselves. Instead, we recommend using an image of a relevant activity, such as running or riding a bike.”
In a statement on Monday, Facebook apologized for its original stance and said it had determined that the photo does comply with its guidelines.
“Our team processes millions of advertising images each week, and in some instances we incorrectly prohibit ads,” the statement said. “This image does not violate our ad policies. We apologize for the error and have let the advertiser know we are approving their ad.”
Facebook had originally allowed the event page to remain, but refused to approve the group’s advert, which would have boosted the post.
The policy in question is aimed at blocking content that encourages unhealthy weight loss – the opposite intent of Cherchez la Femme, which was promoting body positivity.
This is not the first time Facebook has come under fire for its censorship of photos. In March, the site faced backlash when it concluded that a photograph of topless Aboriginal women in ceremonial paint as part of a protest violated “community standards”.
Critics said that ban was an obvious double standard, noting that Facebook allows celebrities such as Kim Kardashian to pose with body paint covering her nipples.
Instagram and Facebook have also faced opposition for policies banning women from exposing their nipples, with critics arguing that the guidelines are prejudiced against women and transgender users.
Cherchez la Femme vented its frustrations on its Facebook page.
“Facebook has ignored the fact that our event is going to be discussing body positivity (which comes in all shapes and sizes, but in the particular case of our event, fat bodies), and has instead come to the conclusion that we’ve set out to make women feel bad about themselves by posting an image of a wonderful plus sized woman,” the group said. “We’re raging pretty hard over here.”
Jessamy Gleeson, co-producer of the group, said she was initially so shocked by the language in Facebook’s explanation that she didn’t know how to respond.
“I was utterly furious. I couldn’t comprehend it, quite frankly,” she said. “We thought it was really horrible and isolating and alienating … Women with fat bodies can, of course, be as desirable as anybody else.”
Gleeson said she was not satisfied with Facebook’s apology and hopes the company will re-examine its policies and address double standards in how it reviews photos of women.
“Quite simply they need to understand we can use images of fat women to promote women being happy,” she said, adding, “What about all the cases that don’t receive this media attention? They’ve been wrong in many other thousands of cases, I’m sure.”
ProPublica Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment Donate Bernard Parker, left, was rated high risk; Dylan Fugett was rated low risk. (Josh Ritchie for ProPublica) Machine Bias There’s software used across the country to predict future criminals. And it’s biased against blacks. by Julia Angwin, Jeff Larson, Surya Mattu and Lauren Kirchner, ProPublica May 23,…
Students at a medical college in Thailand have been caught using spy cameras linked to smartwatches to cheat during exams. They used wireless spycams in eyeglasses to capture exam questions, transmit them to associates elsewhere and receive responses through linked smartwatches.
But the entrance exam in question was cancelled after the plot was discovered and Arthit Ourairat, the rector of Rangsit University, posted pictures of the hi-tech cheating equipment on his Facebook page.
The cheating attempt has already been compared to Hollywood’s classic spy dramas but it shows how easily such high-tech devices are available to those who seek to gain an unfair advantage in educational pursuits.
Unfortunately, it’s a problem that will only get worse when devices such as smartglasses become cheaper and more readily available.
Smartglasses such as Google Glass have the capability to take photos, send information and also display information on the lens itself, eliminating the need to connect to a smartwatch.
Smartwatch ban
It was around this time last year that universities globally started banning, or at least exploring a ban on, smartwatches in exams.
Smartwatches are considered an aid to cheating in exams because they give easy access to stored text and images, language translation, mathematical calculations and internet access.
But a blanket ban on all watches – traditional or smart – could be on the horizon, especially because it is difficult and impractical for exam invigilators to differentiate between the two in an exam environment.
Other gadgets
It’s not just smartwatches we need to worry about. A plethora of hi-tech cheating gadgets exist that would also not look out of place in a James Bond or Mission Impossible film.
These are devices such as special glasses with a built-in transmitter and a separate wireless earpiece, aimed at establishing a two-way secretive audio communication between people during exams.
There is a device marketed as a Cheating Watch that can store PDF, Word and other documents. But it also has a super-fast emergency button that locks other buttons and displays only the time when approached by any suspecting exam invigilator.
Many other devices are offered for covert cheating in exams through wireless audio transmission.
There is even an Invisible Watch that appears to display nothing when the watch is switched on. But when viewed with special glasses sold with the watch, the screen becomes visible and you can see any uploaded content, such as your exam cheat notes.
An open market
Before you criticise me for giving away details of these devices, I should point out that there is a very open marketplace where they are being spruiked and sold as gadgets to aid cheating in exams. They are not hard to find.
Similar devices are also being sold on Amazon and eBay, companies that appear to claim no ethical responsibility for what is being sold on their platforms. Prices range from as little as A$40 up to A$600, depending on the features.
Although these devices could be used for legitimate purposes, the marketing of such gadgets to students for cheating in exams is an issue that is plaguing educational institutions.
Globally, educational institutions abhor the erosion of academic integrity and want students who are smart with gadgetry – not smart-cheaters. The dilemma facing exam administrators is deciding which devices to ban and how.
Similar to the ban on mobile phones in exams, any devices capable of storing, transmitting, receiving and displaying digital information should also be banned.
So, as a starting point, a ban on watches – traditional and smart – for now is the way forward.
In order to eliminate the problem of differentiating between watches in an exam environment, some Australian universities have already implemented bans on all wristwatches. Others across Australia and the world should follow suit.
As newer surreptitious technologies emerge, educational institutions will have to come up with better plans to combat these new ways of cheating, and devise solutions that could range from banning devices to scanning for radio signals as was done using drones in an exam in China!
A San Francisco-based company has won a U.S. government-sponsored competition with an alcohol monitoring devices that can be worn on the wrist, the latest milestone in the development of wearable technologies that monitor and diagnose medical conditions.
BACtrack, a privately held medical device maker, took the $200,000 top prize in the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Wearable Biosensor Challenge on Thursday with its wristband monitor, which measures blood alcohol levels via sweat on the skin.
The product, dubbed BACtrack Skyn, has not yet been submitted to the Food and Drug Administration for marketing approval.
Dr. George Koob, head of the NIH's National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, said he expected the device to be a valuable resource for alcohol research community.
“It can help doctors accurately measure a patient’s drinking history, and not just depend on the most recent tests," Koob said. "This can help a lot with the treatment.”
Medical, law enforcement and transportation officials have long sought better technology for detection of blood alcohol levels. Traditional portable breath alcohol testers (PBTs) are unwieldy and can cost over $1,000, and they don't provide ongoing monitoring of alcohol levels.
“The blood alcohol monitoring devices used in legal and medical circles are big and bulky, like a ball and chain for the ones using it,” said Keith Nothacker, president of BACtrack. “We wanted to make something people would want to wear."
The device in its current form will not, however, be a substitute for breathalyzers or blood tests used by law enforcement, because the device does not provide real-time blood-alcohol levels.
Nothacker said it takes about 45 minutes for ethanol to be transmitted through the skin, and that the device is designed to provide a recent history of alcohol use.
BACtrack has been experimenting with consumer-centric alcohol testing for several years. In 2013, it introduced the BACtrack Mobile Breathalyzer, which syncs with a smartphone to track blood alcohol content.
BACtrack beat seven other smaller companies to win the NIH competition. Milo, a Santa Barbara based technology startup, won the $100,000 second-place prize for its design of a wearable alcohol content tracker that also uses a skin sensor and communicates with a smartphone using wireless technology.
(Corrects third paragraph to show that the product has not been submitted to regulators for approval, not that it is awaiting approval and is expected to be on the market by year-end. And corrects ninth paragraph to say it takes about 45 minutes for ethanol to be transmitted through the skin, not for it to show up in the blood)
(Reporting by Mir Ubaid; Editing by Jonathan Weber and Cynthia Osterman)
With the world growing more concerned about attacks by militant groups on civilians, Microsoft Corp on Friday outlined new policies to crack down what it called "terrorist content" on some of its consumer services.
In a blog post, the company said it would ban what it called "terrorist content" on some services such as gaming tool Xbox Live, the consumer version of its Outlook email service, and its consumer documents-sharing service.
But for its search engine Bing, Microsoft cited free expression and said it would remove links only when that "is required of search providers under local law."
Initially, Microsoft will rely on consumers to report objectionable content. The company also said it would fund research of a tool that scans content and flags images, audio and video.
"We will consider terrorist content to be material posted by or in support of organizations included on the Consolidated United Nations Security Council Sanctions List that depicts graphic violence, encourages violent action, endorses a terrorist organization or its acts, or encourages people to join such groups," the blog post said.
The steps illustrate the tough predicament many companies face balancing public safety with individual rights.
The issue came to the fore after Apple Inc. and the U.S. government clashed over whether federal authorities could force Apple to create software to unlock a phone used by a shooter in the San Bernardino attacks last year.
Ultimately, the government paid a third party to unlock the phone.
"The events of the past few months are a strong reminder that the Internet can be used for the worst reasons imaginable," Microsoft said in its post.
Microsoft said users can use an online form to recommend removal of content.
"Use this Web form to report content posted by or in support of a terrorist organization that depicts graphic violence, encourages violent action, endorses a terrorist organization or its acts, or encourages people to join such groups," the instructions read.
Microsoft said it would provide information on how to counter negative content, a policy adopted by another technology giant: Facebook Inc.
The social-media service this year announced a tool it calls "counter speech," encouraging activists to counter extremist views with posts promoting tolerance. Last year, Facebook updated its guidelines to prohibit advocacy of "terrorist activity, organized criminal activity or promoting hate."
Social media site Twitter Inc suspended 125,000 accounts, most of which it believed were linked to the militant Islamic State group.
(Reporting by Sarah McBride; Editing by David Gregorio)
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Tuesday warned that a dangerous financial bubble has formed in the technology industry - and Silicon Valley responded with a collective eye roll.
In a Reuters interview, the New York billionaire said technology start-ups that had never earned a profit were able to sell shares at very high prices, likening the situation to the overheated stock market in 2007.
"I'm talking about companies that have never made any money, that have a bad concept and that are valued at billions of dollars, so here we go again," Trump said.
Many tech watchers have repeatedly warned of a tech bubble as the number of private companies valued at $1 billion or more - known as unicorns - have soared to 163, according to venture capital research firm CB Insights.
So Trump's declaration, in the eyes of Silicon Valley's entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, was nothing new. Investors and others took to Twitter to poke fun at Trump's campaign slogan "Make America Great Again!" by repeating the phrase, "Make Bubbles Great Again."
"FINALLY someone calls it out," Marc Andreessen, a general partner at the prominent venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, tweeted, mocking Trump.
In the interview, Trump said the high valuations that tech start-ups are able to fetch today remind him of 2007, when an overheated housing market helped drive U.S. stocks to unsustainable valuations before the bubble burst.
"You have a stock market that is very strange," the presumptive Republican nominee said. "You look at some of these tech stocks that are so, so weak as a concept and a company, and they're selling for so much money. And I would have said can that ever happen again? I think that could happen again."
Some startup founders rejected Trump's generalization that all companies are burning cash and overvalued; certainly many of them are, and in the last several months a correction has started to rectify years of exuberant investments.
Still, other companies continue to raise money successfully and turn profits.
"So far he has been saying dumb things but they seem to be getting dumber and dumber," Vivek Wadhwa, an entrepreneur and Stanford University fellow, told Reuters.
"I was going to tweet (the comments) while calling Peter Thiel and saying, 'Here is your buddy.'"
Thiel, an influential investor well-known for his contrarian ideas, is one of the few Silicon Valley leaders to openly support Trump.
Thiel was not immediately available for comment.
"There is nothing in his (Trump's) track record to show that he has been out here and met with any technology leaders and knows this industry and knows about innovation," said Aaron Ginn, co-founder of the Lincoln Initiative, a community that promotes libertarian and technology-friendly values.
Which is ironic, Ginn said, given how much technology - especially Twitter - has helped Trump's campaign.
"He says things and does things that are made for entertainment," Ginn said.
(Reporting by Heather Somerville; Editing by Peter Henderson and Tiffany Wu)
A federal judge has rejected Mozilla Corp's request to force the U.S. government to disclose a vulnerability related to its Firefox web browser that the company says was exploited by the FBI to investigate users of a large child pornography website.
U.S. District Judge Robert Bryan in Tacoma, Washington, on Monday rejected Mozilla's bid to intervene in a case against a school administrator charged in the investigation, Jay Michaud.
Bryan had previously ordered prosecutors to disclose to Michaud's lawyers a flaw in a browser used to view websites including the child porn one on the anonymous Tor network that is partly based on the code for Mozilla's Firefox browser.
Mozilla, seeking to fix the flaw, moved to intervene, asking Bryan to force the government to disclose to Mozilla the vulnerability before revealing it to Michaud.
After the Justice Department asked Bryan to reconsider, citing national security, he said on Thursday prosecutors did not need to make the disclosure to Michaud.
Bryan on Monday said that made Mozilla's request moot, adding it "appears that Mozilla's concerns should be addressed to the United States."
Mozilla in a statement said it would argue to the government "that the safest thing to do for user security is to disclose the vulnerability and allow it to be fixed."
A Justice Department spokesman declined comment. Colin Fieman, Michaud's lawyer, said he would seek the indictment's dismissal due to prosecutors electing against disclosure.
Michaud is one of 137 people facing U.S. charges after the FBI in February 2015 seized the server for Playpen, a child porn website on the Tor network, which allows anonymous online communication.
To identify its 214,898 members, authorities sought a search warrant from a Virginia judge allowing them to deploy a "network investigative technique."
The techniqued caused a user's computer to send back data any time that user logged onto the website while the FBI operated it for two weeks.
Thousands of people domestically and abroad are being investigated as a result. The probe recently ran into trouble, after two defendants secured rulings declaring warrants in their cases invalid.
Mozilla's brief came amid renewed attention to the process for disclosing computer security flaws discovered by federal agencies.
Mozilla said it asked if the FBI submitted the browser flaw through an interagency vulnerability review process used to determine if vulnerabilities should be disclosed to affected companies or should be used secretly, but received no answer.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in New York; Editing by Matthew Lewis and Andrew Hay)
Berkshire Hathaway Inc Chairman Warren Buffett is backing a consortium vying for Yahoo Inc's internet assets that includes Quicken Loans Inc founder Dan Gilbert, people familiar with the matter said on Friday.
While there is no certainty that the consortium will prevail in the auction, the interest of Buffett and Gilbert is a boost for the Sunnyvale, California-based company, which has been surpassed in recent years by rivals such as Alphabet Inc in the race for internet users and advertising dollars.
The consortium's participation in the sale process also represents a challenge to U.S. telecommunications carrier Verizon Communications Inc, whose deal to acquire AOL last year for $4.4 billion has made it a favorite to prevail in its bid for Yahoo's assets among industry analysts.
The consortium is in the second round of bidding in the auction for Yahoo's assets, the people said. Buffett is helping finance the offer, one of the people added.
It is not clear whether Gilbert, a billionaire who also owns the U.S. basketball team Cleveland Cavaliers, is using Quicken Loans in any way as part of the consortium's bid.
The sources asked not to be identified because the details of the sale process are confidential. Buffett offered no immediate comment when reached by telephone. Quicken Loans declined to comment on behalf of Gilbert, while Yahoo declined to comment.
Reuters reported last month that Yahoo had shortlisted close to 10 bidders in the auction for its assets, with most offers coming from private equity firms.
At Berkshire Hathaway's annual meeting last month, Buffett admitted that Berkshire had been slow to adapt to new technology as far as its investments were concerned.
Buffett, whose Berkshire is an IBM Corp shareholder, said in a CNBC interview on May 2 that Yahoo's business had deteriorated significantly and that "something has to change there." He did not mention any potential bid on his part.
Susan Decker, who worked at Yahoo in several senior roles between 2000 and 2009, including president and chief financial officer, is now a director on Berkshire's board.
"I hope the next owner can do something to revitalize the spirit of the core things that made Yahoo very, very unique and create a distinction in consumers' minds about why they love Yahoo still. It will be helpful if it is private or part of a much larger corporation to achieve that," she said on CNBC in an interview on April 29.
Last month, Yahoo said that activist hedge fund Starboard Value LP Chief Executive Jeffrey Smith and three independent directors associated with him would join its board immediately.
Yahoo's four new directors were on a slate that Starboard had proposed to oust Yahoo's entire board.
(Reporting by Michael Flaherty and Greg Roumeliotis in New York; Additional reporting by Dan Freed and Jennifer Ablan in New York and Liana B. Baker in San Francisco; Editing by Bernard Orr and Cynthia Osterman)
A car-sized sled powered by electromagnets rocketed to more than 100 miles (160 kph) an hour through the Nevada desert on Wednesday in what the Los Angeles company developing the technology said was the first successful test of a futurist transit system called hyperloop.
Hyperloop One is among several companies competing to bring to life a technical vision by Elon Musk, the founder of rocket maker SpaceX and electric car company Tesla Motors, who suggested sending pods holding passengers and cargo inside giant vacuum tubes between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
It's a matter of debate how soon – or whether – passengers and cargo will ride the system at velocities approaching 750 miles per hour (1,200 kph), but Hyperloop One already has raised $80 million from backers including clean technology venture capitalist Khosla Ventures; high-speed railway SNCF, the French National Rail Company; and GE Ventures.
Brogan BamBrogan, a former SpaceX engineer who co-founded Hyperloop One, called the test a major milestone.
"Technology development testing can be a tricky beast," he said to a crowd of 300. "You never know on a given day if things are going to work exactly like you want."
The sled began on a train track and then was rocketed to 105 miles per hour by electromagnets as electricity was shot into copper coils. After a short ride, the sled ran into a sand trap, sending out silicon sprays. If all goes according to plan, sleds will levitate and carry pods in a test later this year. Gigantic tubes already are scattered around the Las Vegas area test site.
Company Chief Executive Rob Lloyd on Wednesday forecast a hyperloop would transport cargo by 2019 and passengers by 2021.
"We're practicing large, fast construction that includes robotic welding. Techniques that allow us to create a perfect production level," he said. "What people think takes years should take quarters."
Musk created a stir by saying California could build a hyperloop from San Francisco to Los Angeles for around $6 billion, a 10th of the cost of the state's high-speed rail project.
Skeptics say real-world challenges ranging from construction permits to making the new technology work mean the costs are likely to be far greater.
"The hyperloop might be promising, but it's still unproven and just an idea. High-speed rail is a proven technology that's been in use around the world for decades," said Lisa Marie Alley, a spokeswoman with the California High Speed Rail Authority.
A hyperloop, she said, will run into the same challenges of any other large infrastructure project, including funding, right of way, environmental permits, approvals and clearances. "None of it is easy," she said.
Alon Levy, a mathematician who writes about mass transit for the blog Pedestrian Observations, said the cost estimates from hyperloop backers do not fully take into account difficulties such as engineering turns at jet speed or even digging tunnels.
"I do think Hyperloop can be built. But making it work requires much more money than the builders think, and much more than conventional high-speed rail," he said.
(Reporting by Rory Carroll; Editing by Peter Henderson and Leslie Adler)
The Dig An investigative reporter’s candid advice for uncovering life’s everyday truths T. Christian Miller A brief recap. When last we met, ProPublica had just launched a bunch of fun new features, of which this is allegedly one. The idea of this column is to share with you, dear readers, some of the digging skills that…
When was the last time you opened your laptop midconversation or brought your desktop computer to the dinner table? Ridiculous, right? But if you are like a large number of Americans, you have done both with your smartphone.
Less than a decade after the introduction of the first iPhone, more people reach for their smartphones first thing in the morning than reach for coffee, a toothbrush or even the partner lying next to them in bed. During the day, with a smartphone in our pocket, we can check our email while spending time with our children just as easily as we can text a friend while at work. And regardless of what we are doing, many of us are bombarded by notifications of new messages, social media posts, breaking news, app updates and more.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that this pervasiveness of smartphones is making us increasingly distracted and hyperactive. These presumed symptoms of constant digital stimulation also happen to characterize a well-known neurodevelopmental disorder: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD. Could the pinging and dinging of our smartphones be afflicting even those of us not suffering from ADHD with some of that condition’s symptoms? As a behavioral scientist, I set out to test this idea in a well-controlled experiment.
Studying digital interruption
My colleagues and I recruited 221 millennials – students at the University of British Columbia – to participate in a two-week study. Importantly, these participants were recruited from the university’s general participant pool, rather than from a population of students diagnosed with ADHD.
During the first week, we asked half the participants to minimize phone interruptions by activating the “do-not-disturb” settings and keeping their phones out of sight and far from reach. We instructed the other half to keep their phone alerts on and their phones nearby whenever possible.
In the second week, we reversed the instructions: Participants who had used their phones’ “do-not-disturb” settings switched on phone alerts, and vice versa. The order in which we gave the instructions to each participant was randomly determined by a flip of a coin. This study design ensured that everything was kept constant, except for how frequently people were interrupted by their phones. We confirmed that people felt more interrupted by their phones when they had their phone alerts on, as opposed to having them off.
Measuring inattentiveness and hyperactivity
We measured inattentiveness and hyperactivity by asking participants to identify how frequently they had experienced 18 symptoms of ADHD over each of the two weeks. These items were based on the criteria for diagnosing ADHD in adults as specified by the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-V).
The inattentiveness questions covered a wide range of potential problems, such as making careless mistakes, forgetting to pay a bill and having difficulty sustaining attention or listening to others. The hyperactivity questions were similarly broad, assessing things like fidgeting, feeling restless, excessive talking and interrupting others.
The results were clear: more frequent phone interruptions made people less attentive and more hyperactive.
Because ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder with complex neurological and developmental causes, these findings in no way suggest that smartphones can cause ADHD. And our research certainly does not show that reducing phone interruptions can treat ADHD. But our findings do have implications for all of us who feel interrupted by our phones.
Smartphone ubiquity poses risks
These findings should concern us. Smartphones are the fastest-selling electronic gadget in history – in the 22 seconds it took to type this sentence, 1,000 smartphones were shipped to their new owners. Even if one of those 1,000 users became more likely to make a careless mistake, ignore a friend in the middle of a conversation or space out during a meeting, smartphones could be harming the productivity, relationships and well-being of millions.
As with all disorders, symptoms of ADHD form a continuum from the normal to the pathological. Our findings suggest that our incessant digital stimulation is contributing to an increasingly problematic deficit of attention in modern society. So consider silencing your phone – even when you are not in the movie theater. Your brain will thank you.
