Give your phone a break and put your brain to work

Quick, what's your best friend's phone number?

More and more of us have no idea.

Memorizing phone numbers, one of the first things kids used to learn, has become a thing of the past with the advent of cell phones with programmed "contacts," making that call is as simple as pressing a button or tapping on a screen.

If we make a call at all. More and more phones rarely are used to make a call, and spend most of their time sending and receiving texts.

Phone numbers aren't the only thing we no longer memorize.

Whereas big-city taxi drivers used to be experts on navigating around their towns, many are losing that knowledge, relying instead on GPS.

A couple of decades ago, we worried about school children relying too much on calculators and too little on their own mathematical abilities.

While it's fun to watch kids compete in the Scripps National Spelling Bee, and while the importance of spelling should not be dismissed, real-world wordsmiths rely on computerized spell checkers as much as taxi drivers do their TomToms.

The same might be said of handwriting in the digital age.

So much of our mental work has been taken over by microchips that a South Korean researcher says he's found evidence of short-term memory loss in young children because of all their electronic interaction with games and smartphones.

"Overuse of smartphones and game devices hampers the balanced development of the brain," researcher Byun Gi-Won told the Korea JoongAng Daily.

We don't think researchers are overstating the problem. Next time you're in a large meeting and there's a break, try counting the seconds until someone pulls out a smartphone to send a text, check email or update a Facebook status. You probably won't reach the double digits.

Summer's the traditional time for a vacation; it's also a great time to take a digital break.

Try staying off the cell phone except for vital communications. Turn off the tablet, find a pen and dust off your analog diary. Try memorizing phone numbers of close friends or family members and calculate simple equations.

Tackle the sudoku, crossword puzzle or Celebrity Cipher on the Gazette's comics and classified pages.

Read a book and do some aerobic exercises to enhance blood circulation to the brain.

Technophiles can't wait to get their hands on the latest electronics, and that's OK, but they shouldn't neglect the world's most advanced information processor right between their ears.