Are Smartphones Making Us Stupid, or Are We Just Cooked?

In the 5th episode of Antisocial Scientists, Diego decides to spice things up by leaving his phone in another room. Why? Because it turns out that just having your phone nearby uses up a chunk of your unconscious attention, essentially draining your brain's RAM even when it's completely switched off. The hosts break down a few studies, including Ward et al. (2017), which tested how phone placement affects fluid intelligence and working memory. Justin tries one of the memory tasks live on the podcast and proceeds to fail the math portion spectacularly. They also look at a tedious letter-finding test done with German participants over Zoom, which found that having your phone present makes your processing speed about 10% slower. But the real concern, this drain on cognitive capacity pushes you into System 1 heuristic thinking, which might mean that having your phone on your desk might actually make you more likely to fall for the manosphere?

Then, Justin admits he finally did some reading and tackled a chunk of Jonathan Haidt's bestseller, The Anxious Generation. Despite his initial bias against Haidt's "shadow intellectual dark web" vibes, Justin begrudgingly admits the guy makes a compelling, well-written argument about how smartphones are contributing to Gen Z attentional deficits and socializing issues. They dive into longitudinal data showing that heavy media multitasking behavior could be growing ADHD symptoms over time. But while Haidt's solution is to send kids outside to do unsupervised, risky things at summer camp, Justin argues that being an "inside kid" is perfectly fine as long as you limit screen time. After all, without being inside kids, they wouldn't have a podcast.

So, are we permanently cooked? Justin and Diego lean towards harm reduction rather than going full luddite. While boomers scrolling Facebook reels might be beyond saving, the rest of us can take small steps, like putting phones in phone farms during class, using a smartwatch (the vape of the smoking world), or just leaving the phone in your bag while you work. Keep your phone, know the risks, and do what you want.

Mentioned Literature

Clayton, R. B., Leshner, G., & Almond, A. (2015). The Extended iSelf: The Impact of iPhone Separation on Cognition, Emotion, and Physiology. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 20(2), 119–135. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcc4.12109

Hadar, A., Hadas, I., Lazarovits, A., Alyagon, U., Eliraz, D., & Zangen, A. (2017). Answering the missed call: Initial exploration of cognitive and electrophysiological changes associated with smartphone use and abuse. PLOS ONE, 12(7), e0180094. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0180094

Skowronek, J., Seifert, A., & Lindberg, S. (2023). The mere presence of a smartphone reduces basal attentional performance. Scientific Reports, 13(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-36256-4

Ward, A. F., Duke, K., Gneezy, A., & Bos, M. W. (2017). Brain Drain: The Mere Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity. Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 2(2), 140–154. https://doi.org/10.1086/691462

Chapters

• 00:00 — Spicing Up the Podcast & Phone RAM
• 01:46 — Ward et al. (2017) & Justin Fails Basic Math
• 08:01 — The Mere Presence Effect (Off vs. Silent)
• 15:15 — The Tedious German Zoom Test
• 18:58 — Dual Process Theory & Falling for the Manosphere
• 21:20 — Justin Reads The Anxious Generation
• 25:40 — Touching Grass vs. Inside Kids
• 27:25 — Are We Cooked? Harm Reduction & Boomers
• 35:40 — Outro

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From there, Diego goes on a tangent about how he was such a chronic procrastinator during his PhD that he literally built himself a gamified motivation app , except he didn't have the motivation to finish it until AI came along and he could vibe code the whole thing in a day. Two AIs, zero thinking, one working app.

Then Justin finally reveals what he actually does at work (only took 4 episodes). Turns out he's been designing Mai, a proactive speech agent that sits in on student group work, listens for moments where things are going off the rails, and gives little nudges to get them back on track. Think of it as a really polite classroom assistant that can hear when the group is confused, when someone's being a jerk, or when one person is doing all the work while the others are coasting. It was tested in Finnish middle schools for five weeks and early results are looking promising: groups that got more nudges early on needed fewer nudges in later weeks. The goal is that the AI voice eventually plays in your head like an internal script and you don't need it anymore. Self-regulated learning, baby.

Oh, and you might want to skip the post-credit scene for this one.

Paper

Fernandes, D., Villa, S., Nicholls, S., Haavisto, O., Buschek, D., Schmidt, A., Kosch, T., Shen, C., & Welsch, R. (2025). AI makes you smarter but none the wiser: The disconnect between performance and metacognition. Computers in Human Behavior, 108779. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2025.108779 Chapters 00:00 -- The Dunning-Kruger Effect: What It Actually Is (and Isn't) 05:48 -- The Study: LSAT Puzzles With ChatGPT Open 08:46 -- Is Trusting AI Lazy or Just Smart? 14:10 -- Study 2 and the Big Findings 20:55 -- Metacognitive Laziness and What It Means for Education 23:01 -- Diego Vibe Codes a Motivation App 28:57 -- Justin's Research: Mai, the Metacognitive AI 37:39 -- Mai Goes to Middle School 46:36 -- Outro 47:27 -- Post-Credits Banter

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The Dunning-Kruger Effect according to pop science

The actual Dunning-Kruger Effect

In the highly requested third episode of Antisocial Scientists, Dr Justin Edwards and Dr Diego Garaialde discuss whether AI can think, discuss the use of AI in academic writing and peer review, and teach you how cooking is the perfect metaphor for multitasking.

Have any questions or want to talk to us about the podcast? Contact us directly at diego.garaialde@ucd.ie

In the second episode of Antisocial Scientists, Dr Justin Edwards and Dr Diego Garaialde become "black-pilled" on the field of persuasive design, and examine how so many online platforms are designed to trick users into doing their bidding.

You'll learn what AI psychosis is, how to watch a whole episode of a TV series without going on your phone, and that psychic spies from China are trying to steal your mind's elation.

Have any questions or want to talk to us about the podcast? Contact us directly at diego.garaialde@ucd.ie

In the inaugural episode of Antisocial Scientists, podcast extraordinaire Dr Justin Edwards and assistant professor of computer science Dr Diego Garaialde dive into the topic of motivation and decision-making by describing the hit video game The Sims.

The discussion opens on a recent preprint that has gone viral and garnered infamy and praise in equal measure, titled "Your Brain on ChatGPT" published by Kosmyna and colleagues from the MIT Media Lab.

Go to the timecode 19:16 to skip to the main discussion, how human motivation and decision-making mirrors the idea of the Player and the Sim, from the hit games The Sims 1-4. This idea of two types of processing is popular in cognitive science and psychology, and is commonly referred to as Dual-process Theories of Cognition. The Player is the part of you that makes future plans by putting in mental effort and attention, and can think over the many possibilities in front of you without ever having to leave your couch (e.g. the Player telling the Sim what to do during the day). The Sim, on the other hand, is the part of you that gets their hands dirty. The Sim learns from past experiences, reacts to their environment and emotions, and tends to prefer actions that lead to positive outcomes. By understanding how our Sim self is affected by our environment and how we can train it to follow our goals, we can overcome motivational issues once and for all.

Learn about important psychological concepts such as temporal discounting, chunking, and the Associative Cybernetic model, and how we can apply these theories to our own lives so that we can keep our Sim selves on track.

Have any questions or want to talk to us about the podcast? Contact us directly at diego.garaialde@ucd.ie