No, I see a bunch of people walking around not caring about anything, but how many friends they got on their Facebook or how many likes they get.

Smartphones are actually dumbing us down. Why read when you can just use your smartphone to look up information? Why look both ways across the street when you have to text your BFF ASAP (I have seen this happen). It's appalling how many people on a given day of classes I see with their heads bent over their smartphones, instead of looking where they are going or even paying attention to the lectures. I can only imagine what the drivers are doing.

Also, I don't own a cell phone and I'm getting by just fine.

No, it makes us lazier. If we take the navigation on phones: I know it is there if I cannot find some place and don't make any effort to look for myself. In the olden days, I would walk around, think, use natural orientation abilities and now I am practically lost without the phone.

I think smartphones are immensely useful, but I also think that they took away a lot qualities we used to have before them.

No, we are the users, the phone just gives us a platform. With all the option they offer, i think they would possibly make us dumber then smarter!

No, I think smartphone are making us dumber. Everything can be looked up right away without having to think about it first and use your brain or instinct. Smartphones are distracting people while driving and that way causes accidents. People also cannot have a proper conversation anymore without having to check their phone every minute, which I think is very rude and irritating. Smartphones also cause concentration problems while studying or in class. For all of these reasons I don't have a smartphone and I don't feel like I miss out on anything.

I don't think smartphones make as smarter per se, but I think that the more we use them the better we get at solving problems (for example, navigating to find a certain application or function of the phone, something our parents can't really do). The more we use technology, the more we are open and flexible with other, more developed technologies. So in that sense, it does make us better. But it doesn't directly affect our brains, I'm afraid. I do think that the ease with which we can get answers to all our questions does make it more likely for us to become more knowledgeable on things, but that's not exactly being smart.

I would say I agree if it weren't so general. In some cases smartphones can make us better and more adaptable, but not for everyone of course.

Depends on what you mean by ''smarter''. Of course, it doesn't strengthen our IQ or something. I believe it can, however, train us how to use our brain better. Games like Nintendo's braintraining and other programs have already proven that. Playing games and using apps on our phones can thus potentially ''train our brain''. A smartphone also allows us to look interesting things up anywhere you are. If you don't have a smartphone and you wait till you are home, you may forget to look it up.

All in all: I believe smartphones have the POTENTIAL to make us more >knowledgeable<, and train our brains, but it really depends on how you use it.

No, they are not. Smartphone means the phone itself is getting more intelligence, not the people using it. Smartphones make it so people practically have their whole computer with them, if anything they are making things for society a little too easy. With the growing technology around us, people need to be careful not to be reliant on it.

No they dont make us smarter at all. They are just an extension of ourselves and make things easier, and faster. I even think that technology is making us dumber.. Let's take the calculator, for example, if it werent for the calculator we will be still calculating things in our own heads.. now we only type in the figures and dont even think about it. Same with smartphones, if we want to know something, we look it up, without letting our brains doing the work. People become dumber and lazier every year.. and I do think that al those 'tools' are one of the reasons for that. Why would we put so much effort in it, if our smartphone can do it for us?

Its a platform for us to look up information and news. This has not make us smarter as to make us dumber. We are now using this to refer to information instead of using our own knowledge. It is now not a question of knowing something, but how quick you can look it up on your mobile device. So no, it has not make us smarter

It's funny how you put it, but no. Think of the vast target audience that owns a smartphone. I don't think those people become smarter by using it. Think about teenagers. They want a smartphone to belong to a certain group, but they don't become smarter on the account of the latest iPhone.

Do smartphones make us smarter? No. Does it make our lives easier? Yes. But it is still very difficult to answer your question because you don't really define the meaning of 'us'. I can give you an answer, but I will talk in the name of a target audience aged 18 to 25. So mainly students.

It makes it easier to communicate, to stay in touch, to reach out to each other in an easy, cheap and fast way. It is true, we learn about how apps work and how to use them, but it's just some usability skills, right? It's not like a smartphone teaches me how to own at life, does it? It just provides means of me getting through my day a little easier than before, when smartphones were not available yet.

Ah, but if you are referring to people studying technological sciences or IT or whatever, then them studying smartphones might make them smarter indeed. It just depends on how you look at your question.

I do not think smartphones will make a person smarter. On the contrary, those devices will think for us, and will allow us to use our brain less actively. It could make you smarter in the sense of acquiring faster knowledge on the continuous availability of Internet and other applications, but I still think it only makes us lazier.

I think they are giving us the opportunity to make us smarter, such as comparing prices online while standing in a shop or checking your position on a map when you are lost on your day trip to a new city.

Nevertheless, they also give us the opportunity to have a lexicon, a dictionary and similar online knowledge always at hand. And I think this is why smartphones are actually not making us smarter. It just does not seem necessary to learn anything anymore because theoretically everything could be looked up in a few seconds.

no, smartphones are making us lazy and dumb the phones are becoming smarter and we are becoming lazier and ignorant..

Controversial, but disagree! I also feel that they do not improve to people's natural inventiveness. Smartphones are merely tools to aid us in general. However, certain applications can be used to actively train the brain, but somehow smartphones are usually used for other things such as social interaction.

The phone themselves are smart and are getting smarter with every update and new release. However they do not make people smarter. They can be used as a tool to look up information fast and where ever you are but that will only make us lazier not smarter. With the rise of smartphone people rely less and less on their own knowledge and quickly look things up online.

Actually I believe smartphone are making us dumber. You can even extract it from the name. Your phone is smart so why would you be? By using a smartphone your phone will resolve your issues by for example the use of a specific app. Therefore you will not have to think about the problem yourself anymore. People are also getting less creative by using a smartphone. In stead of checking what kind of food you have in-house and see what you can cook with it by yourself you just download an app, add the ingredients you have in house and the app will give you a recipe. Also for example simple calculations we use to make in our head or on a piece of paper can now easily be done by the calculator on your phone. The smartphone 'thinks' for us so our brain gets lazy and less creative. Therefore I would say smartphones are making people less intelligent.

No it makes us carry about only that, with other words we use it to stay in touch the whole day with social media like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and many more of these tools. I think the only thing what it does is making us smarter in the use of it but not in making us smarter as a person.

I'm reminded of a show I watched, where two teenagers were texting each other. The girlfriend was on foot, and her boyfriend was driving. They were trying to decide where to meet up. Well, the girl was crossing an intersection, nose buried in her smartphones display. Her boyfriend was entering the same intersection, completely oblivious to the outside world. I'm sure you can guess what happened.

Yes, I dont see eye to eye with the statement that smartphones are making us smarter.

There are two reasons for the argument.

First, the more we are dependent on smartphones, the less smart we are, for example, I have seen a lot of people who spend most of time using smartphones tend to forget even their family's phone numbers and even some of them get lost when their gadget malfunctions because the function of GPS don't work

Smartphones just make transactions quicker, thus, the intelligence factor is not helped.