How constantly looking at your phone and the TV could be making you obese: Switching from gadget to gadget can impair self-control and make it harder to resist temptation
- ‘Media multitasking’ causes a brain imbalance in the area linked to temptation
- Those who check their phones a lot spend more time in ‘food points-of-sale’
- Researchers warn ‘media multitasking may be implicated in obesity’
With our hectic lives many of us rely on mobiles, laptops and smart watches to keep on top of everything.
But scientists now warn constantly switching between the gadgets may be wreaking havoc with our waistlines.
Media multitasking’ – simultaneously switching between digital media – impairs self-control, which leads us to ‘favour reward over control’.
And those who cannot resist checking their phone while streaming their favourite box set typically spend more time in restaurants and cafés, the research found.
Experts at Rice University, Houston, fear ‘media multitasking may be implicated in the recent obesity epidemic’.
Switching from gadget-to-gadget may impair our self-control when it comes to food (stock)
Richard Lopez, study author, said: ‘Increased exposure to phones, tablets and other portable devices has been one of the most significant changes to our environments in the past few decades.
‘And this occurred during a period in which obesity rates also climbed in many places.
‘So, we wanted to conduct this research to determine whether links exists between obesity and abuse of digital devices — as captured by people’s tendency to engage in media multitasking.
‘Such links are important to establish, given rising obesity rates and the prevalence of multimedia use in much of the modern world.’
To put this to the test, the researchers analysed 123 adults aged 18-to-23 who ‘grew up during the recent period of escalating multitasking and obesity’.
More than a third of the participants were overweight or obese.
All of the volunteers were asked to what extent they experience urges to check their technological devices.
This included looking at their phone while talking to a friend or being distracted by their mobile at work.
The researchers found those who reported greater levels of media multitasking (MMT) tended to have a higher BMI and body fat percentage.
In a second part of the experiment, 72 of the participants agreed to have an MRI brain scan while being shown various images, some of which were of unhealthy food.
Results – published in the journal Brain Imaging and Behavior – revealed the participants who admitted to MMT had increased activity in various regions of their brain when looking at tempting treats.
There was a particular imbalance in the ventral striatum, which is involved in reward processing and has been associated with food temptation.
Activity was also awry in the orbitofrontal cortex, which regulates decision making.
In the final part of the experiment, the researchers analysed how much time the participants spent in ‘food points-of-sale’ by looking at GPS coordinates via their mobiles.
They found the participants who admitted to MMT spent more time in ‘campus eateries’.
This is thought to be due to their brains ‘favouring reward over control’.
‘Taken together, findings from both studies suggest the possibility that media multitasking may be implicated in the recent obesity epidemic,’ the authors wrote.
British teenagers are among the unhealthiest in the Western world, a report found. Our 15-to-19 year olds have the highest rates of obesity in Europe and the fifth highest in the developed world, according to the report by Nuffield Trust and the Association for Young People’s Health