{"id":16607,"date":"2024-11-17T12:38:16","date_gmt":"2024-11-17T11:38:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2024\/11\/17\/lost-your-sense-of-direction-turn-off-your-phone-and-youll-soon-reconnect\/"},"modified":"2024-11-17T12:38:16","modified_gmt":"2024-11-17T11:38:16","slug":"lost-your-sense-of-direction-turn-off-your-phone-and-youll-soon-reconnect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2024\/11\/17\/lost-your-sense-of-direction-turn-off-your-phone-and-youll-soon-reconnect\/","title":{"rendered":"Lost your sense of direction? Turn off your phone and you\u2019ll soon reconnect"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tech giants said today\u2019s digital native kids would be the first generation who would not know what it meant to get lost. But is that a good thing?<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ve lost direction and our brains are shrinking \u2013 at least, our hippocampi are. These seahorse-shaped parts of the brain measure about 5cm, sit just above both ears and drive our spatial awareness and orientation. London taxi drivers, famed for taking the Knowledge, a test that involves memorising the central streets of the capital, have full-sized hippocampi. But <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/nature.2011.9602\">in 2011, neuroscientists at University College London<\/a> discovered that the cabbies\u2019 hippocampi shrunk significantly after retirement.<\/p>\n<p>The development of the hippocampus can also be stunted in childhood. Children living in urban environments rarely see the sun rise or set and cannot tell the difference between east and west. When I volunteered to go into my local school to teach kids about direction, I found they struggled to distinguish north from south and east from west \u2013 though they could do so if allowed to use their phones.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/lifeandstyle\/2024\/nov\/17\/lost-your-sense-of-direction-turn-off-your-phone-and-youll-soon-reconnect\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><br \/>\n<img src=\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/81d88b45a70f51acfe28f5c4f59ed22ec23b9cbf\/0_203_6016_3610\/master\/6016.jpg?width=140&amp;quality=85&amp;auto=format&amp;fit=max&amp;s=4c7989ef58cd905cd611a90b02f0c93f\" title=\"Lost your sense of direction? Turn off your phone and you\u2019ll soon reconnect\" \/>Tech giants said today\u2019s digital native kids would be the first generation who would not know what it meant to get lost. But is that a good thing?<br \/>\nWe\u2019ve lost direction and our brains are shrinking \u2013 at least, our hippocampi are. These seahorse-shaped parts of the brain measure about 5cm, sit just above both ears and drive our spatial awareness and orientation. London taxi drivers, famed for taking the Knowledge, a test that involves memorising the central streets of the capital, have full-sized hippocampi. But in 2011, neuroscientists at University College London discovered that the cabbies\u2019 hippocampi shrunk significantly after retirement.<br \/>\nThe development of the hippocampus can also be stunted in childhood. Children living in urban environments rarely see the sun rise or set and cannot tell the difference between east and west. When I volunteered to go into my local school to teach kids about direction, I found they struggled to distinguish north from south and east from west \u2013 though they could do so if allowed to use their phones. Continue reading&#8230;Technology | The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tech giants said today\u2019s digital native kids would be the first generation who would not know what it meant to get lost. But is that a good thing? We\u2019ve lost direction and our brains are shrinking \u2013 at least, our hippocampi are. These seahorse-shaped parts of the brain measure about 5cm, sit just above both &hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"> <a class=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2024\/11\/17\/lost-your-sense-of-direction-turn-off-your-phone-and-youll-soon-reconnect\/\"> <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Lost your sense of direction? Turn off your phone and you\u2019ll soon reconnect<\/span> Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":16608,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16607"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16607\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}