Do you need to throw your smart phone away to live your best life? Not necessarily, according to researchers from Ruhr Universitat Bochum who suggest that we could all benefit from cutting down on screen time—just only a little bit time.
On average, we spend more than three hours a day glued to our smart phone screens. Between social media, news feeds, endless video games, and an app for pretty much everything else, there’s always something to draw our attention. In recent years, studies have blamed smart phones for modern problems ranging from rising anxiety rates to neck pain. It begs the question: Are people all really better off switching back to landlines(座机)?
“The smart phone is both a blessing and a curse,” says the study leader Dr. Julia Brailovskaia, whose team set out to answer that question by gathering together 619 volunteers, hoping to know how much the smart phone is good for us. Two hundred people put their smart phones completely aside for a week; 226 reduced the amount of time they used the device by one hour a day; 193 people didn’t change anything in their behavior.
Researchers interviewed each person about both their overall lifestyle habits and well-being four months later after the experimental week ended. “We found that both completely giving up the smart phone and reducing its daily use by one hour had positive effects on the well-being of the participants,” as Brailovskaia sums up the upshots. Notably, changing their smart phone habits for just one week appeared to produce lasting outcomes among subjects. Even four months afterward, participants who were told to avoid using their smart phones totally were using their phones for an average of 38 minutes less per day.
Meanwhile, the “one hour less” group were using their phones as much as 45 minutes less per day after four months. This group also showed improved life satisfaction, more exercise, and less depression.
“It’s not necessary to completely give up the smart phone to feel better.” Brailovskaia concludes.
【小题1】What’s the purpose of Paragraph 2?| A．To answer the question on the smart phones. | B．To explain why the experiment was done. |
| C．To state disadvantages of the experiment. | D．To stress the benefits of smart phones. |
| A．They trained them. | B．They interviewed them. |
| C．They gave them a physical exam. | D．They divided them into groups. |
| A．Purposes. | B．Reasons. | C．Results. | D．Doubts. |
| A．In a newspaper. | B．In a chemical report. | C．In a biography. | D．In a sports magazine. |
