How GPS Is Affecting Our Brains..and It’s Not Good



Remember the days of those expensive GPS devices you could buy for your car? It was exciting right? The convenience of not having to use a physical map and having real-time directions that actually talk to you while you’re driving was very popular. Over the years, this technology has gotten much cheaper and has now been added to every smart phone out there. Considering everyone has a smart phone now, everyone has also become reliant on GPS.

Long gone are the days where people had to figure out where they were going by themselves. You now have a phone that tells you exactly where to go. However, this has been determined to be not the healthiest thing for your brain. Some scientists did a study of peoples brains while they weren’t/were using GPS. When people weren’t using GPS, their brains lit up on the scan, which signaled high cognitive functioning. This means the common sense part of your brain and problem solving skills were in high use. When people used GPS however, their brains did not light up nearly as much, which literally means peoples brains weren’t nearly as active.

When the GPS is doing the thinking for you, your brain figures it doesn’t have to do any work. This has caused people to be involved in crashes when their GPS gave them the wrong directions but because their critical thinking skills were shut off, they did not react like they should have. Blind trust in a GPS system is not the safest thing in the world because computers can and will make mistakes from time to time. What do you think about this study? Are you pro or anti-GPS?

Read More from PowerNation

You Might Also Like