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Do GPS apps affect our brains?

About 15 years ago, anthropologist Claudio Aporta and philosopher Eric Higgs travelled to Igloolik, a remote island in far northeast Canada, to answer an intriguing question: How might GPS devices affect the island’s Inuit hunters, who possessed some of the sharpest orientation skills on Earth?

You don’t want to get lost on Igloolik. The proximity of magnetic north makes compasses unreliable. The land can appear utterly featureless, especially in winter, when everything is covered under a thick layer of snow. To navigate, Igloolik’s hunters rely closely on stars, landmarks, patterns of wind and light as well as animal behaviour, and light. GPS has some obvious advantages for Inuit hunters in remote northern Canada, but deadly downsides, too. In winter, the batteries quickly fail unless the devices are kept against the body under much clothing. The units themselves are hard to operate with thick gloves, and their screens ice over in seconds. Worse, GPS can lead young hunters into mortal danger, by mapping out straight-line tracks over thin ice. When their devices fail, young hunters have difficulty relying on the environment for clues.

An extreme example? In fact, not really. We get into far more trouble with GPS. Particularly in North America, the last 15 years have produced a daunting database of disasters wherein people navigating with tiny screens drive directly into danger, destruction, and death. We’re becoming navigational idiots. The problem isn’t GPS itself. The Global Positioning System, which uses a constellation of satellites to determine one’s location on the globe, is just a way of fixing points on a map. Rather, the problem is how smartphone apps such as Google Maps and Apple Maps display our routes. Because these apps seek primarily to direct us efficiently from A to B, their default presentation is a minimalist landscape. It’s all about you and your placement as you move through the map. Paper maps, by contrast, force you to plan and frame your route within a meaningful context. Such maps bear a rough but essential resemblance to the mental map locals carry in their heads.

The distinction between these two wayfinding modes interests not just mapmakers, but neuroscientists, too. Some years ago, scientists at the University of Arizona discovered that rats build a mental map as they navigate a maze. We humans appear to do something similar. Say you travel to an unfamiliar city but forget your smartphone. The first night, the hotel clerk gives you directions to a restaurant with a delicious chocolate mousse. The next day, she points you to a park by the river. On the third, to a museum. Each day, absorbing visual cues and landmarks, you develop and refine a sense of geography and direction. On the fourth day, you realize that if you and walk north a few blocks from the museum, you end up by the river, and then, crossing a bridge, you reach that wonderful restaurant. If you relied on Google Maps instead, you would absorb less of the surroundings, get lost when your battery dies, and never find that restaurant again.

This raises a question: Might overreliance on our phone apps’ egocentric navigational systems affect our brain power? Based on limited animal studies, scientists suspect so. And this is concerning, because it puts people at greater risk of memory loss, Alzheimer’s and dementia. And, of course, getting lost.