Is Your Smartphone Damaging Your Game?
Research Suggests Smartphones Cause Powerful 'Mental fatigue' In a stunning piece of research just 30 minutes of smartphone use has a significant impact on elite football players. The study was published in the esteemed journal, Psychology of Sport and Exercise - published by Elsevier. The research focussed on the impact of smartphone use by players directly before a football game (soccer for our North American readers) and was carried out in Brazil - a country that knows a thing or two about footy (as we call it in the UK). In a very well designed randomised condition design study it was clear that just a short time on the smartphone had a significantly detrimental impact on passing decision making. The scientists behind the study concluded that exposure to the smartphone created a powerful 'mental fatigue' that impacted thinking processes and the ability to convert intention to physical action. Of course this study is on the sport of football so one could ask does th...