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^{The introduction of cell phones has contributed to a myriad of technological and social advancements over the last few decades, providing greater ease in communication, organization, entertainment, travel, safety, and has revolutionized how we function in our day-to-day life. And while this paradigm shift has indeed offered significant benefits to our society both individually and globablly, it has also come with many disadvantages. One such disadvantage has been in the realm of learning and concentration, as deficits in our attention can negatively affect our mental and physical well being. A major example of this can be seen in the impact that cell phone distractions have on driving performance (Goldstein, 2019, p. 110).}

^{Because driving involves a certain degree of automatic processing, which is when someone is able to unintentionally and automatically engage in processing that only uses a fraction of their cognitive resources, it is possible to introduce *some* additional tasks simultaneously (Goldstein, 2019, p. 110). This is why people are able to drive a car and engage with task-irrelevant stimuli at the same time, like listening to music or talking on the phone. There is however, a limit to a person's processing capacity, and those limitations are caused by a number of dynamic factors. One factor, for example, is the perceptual load, or put simply, the difficulty of the task at hand (Goldstein, 2019, p. 112). The higher the perceptual load, the less processing capacity will be available to engage with task irrelevant stimuli (Goldstein, 2019). This all is further affected by the specific circumstances of the situation. For example, if a person is driving in the rain on an unfamiliar route, the difficulty of this driving task increases, which therefore limits a person's capacity to introduce additional stimuli, like talking on the phone.}

^{According to the Car Naturalistic Driving Study, 80 percent of crashes, and 67 percent of near crashes involved the driver being inattentive in some way 3 seconds beforehand (Dingus et al., 2006). This study found that one of the most distracting, and therefore dangerous activities was in fact pushing buttons on a cell phone. And while this research suggests that texting degrades driving performance, it is not simply the physical act of texting itself that is necessarily the cause of that degradation, but rather, it is the degree to which a task reduces the mental resources available to concentrate on driving that can lead to these dangerous outcomes (Goldstein, 2019, p.112). A study with the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety found that engaging with a voice-activated system to perform tasks while driving was in fact more distracting than using hands-on cell phones (Strayer et al., 2013). The outcome of this research is unsurprising to me, as it aligns with the idea that divided attention is more possible for well-practiced tasks. Texting as a tactile task is perhaps more practiced than newer and therefore less practiced technologies that use voice activated systems. And this may differ generationally, as those who grew up with cell phones and the internet may experience voice activated tasks as a lower-load task than those who grew up without these technologies. That said, I am curious how this study may have changed over the last decade, as our dependence on cell phones and the internet have increased exponentially.}