You likely always have your phone nearby, but do you ever get frustrated when you can’t respond to a text in class? Cosmopolitan reports that a new study reveals a strong correlation between being more attached to your phone—meaning the more often you push that little home button to see how many texts, Snapchats, Tinder matches and Facebook notifications you have, the less patient you are IRL.
The Daily Mail reports that the average person checks their phone 85 times a day. That might seem like a lot, but when you think about how much time you spend scrolling through Instagram or testing Snapchat filters, it could be way more.
It may seem pretty obvious that the ability to send and receive messages almost instantly makes us impatent, but in case you’re not convinced, the study from the Psychonomic Bulletin and Review discovered decisive evidence to prove it. The experiment involved offering students different sums of money in exchange for how long they could wait for it—more money for the longer they waited. The results show that students who admitted to spending more time on their phones wanted the money faster.
Cell phone use is one of the most common practices in our lives today, but do you ever think about how constant exposure to technology could be changing our brains? Only one question remains: Would you take the money?