Ray Foley

It's a pretty bold statement, but Ray Foley believes that phones are rotting our brains. It's a theory he picked up while googling on his iPhone.

Those little show-offs, the kids from the Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition invaded Dublin last week. Here they were, with their protons and their pencils, their science and their spots, their smart ass projects under their arm, and their pushy, proud-as-punch teachers bigging them up to all and sundry.

With all that talent and youth, it’s enough to make me spit.

Man, I hate intelligent young people. They remind me of everything I wasn’t when I was their age, and everything they’ll be that I never will. They’ll grow up to be the millionaires of their generation, their successes celebrated by their peers, their future, a vast and brilliant open space full of hope and opportunity.

Me? I’m violently bashing each key of my laptop as I type this, because I’m a dumb angry lug. So, my distain for them is just another expression of my own insecurity and bitterness, but I’m cool with that.

The older generation are pissing me off too. My wife and I spent Saturday night at her parents’ place for dinner. My father-in-law, a pensioner, is an extremely smart guy - one of those people who’ll randomly bring up a subject you might remember having heard something about years ago, and will ream off dates, places and people of interest.

Brainbox

He can entertain and enlighten with interesting facts, funny anecdotes and historical accounts so detailed you’d believe he was actually there. In fact, the dusty old brainbox probably was.

On the night, we had got to talking about the old Cathal O’Shannon series, Thou Shalt Not Kill. You may remember it from RTÉ television back in the mid-nineties. O’Shannon would present an hour-long reconstruction of a famous Irish murder from the last century - it was excellent.

Some of the cases were discussed, and as each one was, my father-in-law could remember who the suspects and victims were, the dates of the killings and probably even the colour of what the victims were wearing. I, on the other hand, spent the night reaching for my iPhone every five minutes to cross-check his facts, hoping to catch him out.

Always eager to lay the blame elsewhere for my failings, I decided that I (and many others of our generation) have been let down by technology. In my opinion, the smart phones we use every day to listen to music, text, make phone calls and email are rotting our brains.

These are all simple things I should know - but I’m slowly losing everything from my memory that I don’t absolutely need, everything I can’t find on google.

You see, I don’t just use my phone for the purposes of contradicting my relatives - I use it for EVERYTHING. Appointments, to-do lists, numbers, notes, reminders, calculations and... google. It’s all on the phone. Nothing remains in my memory any more. Why bother retaining something? I just look it up.

For instance, I just had to look up the title of the Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition, Cathal O’Shannon’s name, and when exactly his series was broadcast. For the record, it was 1994. These are all simple things I should know - but I’m slowly losing everything from my memory that I don’t absolutely need, everything I can’t find on google.

This can’t be good for us. Don’t they say the brain is a muscle like any other, and if it’s not exercised regularly, it becomes weak? Well, at least I thought they said that - I had to look it up. And when I did, I found that yes, numerous studies are proving that the constant use of smartphones is eroding our memory and increasing our stress levels.

Like me, research subjects are expressing examples of memory loss, distraction, weakened interpersonal relationships and even attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

So, what do we do? Well, for the sake of my health and my sanity I’ve decided that from now on if I don’t know something, instead of going to my phone and googling it, I’ll just make it up. You should try it too - we’ll just spoof our way through table quizzes and pub arguments in future, instead of settling it with the phone.

We’ll make up stories that never happened - accuse people of crimes they never committed. If nothing else, it’ll be exciting. And it should make for some exciting defamatory articles from me on this site in the coming weeks.