Featured Image Credit: Vera Vita via Getty
Smartphones can do everything these days, as when once you'd have to carry around a camera, calculator, address book, and far more, now it's all crammed within one relatively small gadget for incredible convenience.
One area that smartphones have completely taken over as well is note taking, as it's incredibly convenient to always have a way of jotting down your thoughts, keeping a to-do list, alongside a general space for writing everything and anything.
It not only saves you having to carry around a pen and paper, but notes are often synced between devices and can be stored in effectively unlimited quantities, so why would you ever go back to the old days of ancient notebooks?
As reported by PhoneArena, it turns out that there's actually a scientific reason why you might want to consider going analog once more, as a groundbreaking piece of research reveals the one thing you should probably never do on your phone.
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The study proposes that writing with a physical pen activates a greater percentage of the brain than typing on your phone, engaging regions tied to memory, motor control, sensory feedback, and language processing.
Typing, as understood through this lens of analysis, is understood to be a far more passive activity despite broadly fulfilling the same function, as you're far more likely to remember what you've written down when you've actually done it with your own hands.
That's why so many places recommend hand-written notes and revision for students looking to best recall information for an exam, as your brain is forced to engage with what you're jotting down on a number of levels.
It appears that part of this is due to the slower nature of handwriting, as spending more time with the information naturally allows it to absorb at a greater rate, but you also gain a benefit of motor-symbol connection as each letter is different, whereas typing requires the same motion regardless of whether you're entering an a or a z.
Researchers have also proposed that handwriting could be extremely beneficial as you age, as it keeps the brain active in a way that typing simply cannot, so you might want consider it as a means of prolonging your lifespan later on in life.
Of course, there are plenty of benefits still to taking notes on your phone, yet that convenience does concretely now come at a cost, and you might want to think about turning back the clocks to a solution that, while appearing dated now, has been proven to stand the test of time.
