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Lost your sense of direction? Turn off your phone and you’ll soon reconnect | Life and style


Tech giants said today’s digital native kids would be the first generation who would not know what it meant to get lost. But is that a good thing?

When I volunteered to go into my local school to teach kids about direction, I found they struggled to distinguish north from south and east from west – though they could do so if allowed to use their phones. Since 2005, when Google Maps was launched claiming it would help users get from A to B and then, three years later, when the iPhone 3G was released featuring “live” location, the online tech giants stated that today’s digital native kids would be the first generation who would not know what it meant to get lost. The famous ‘blue marble’ Apollo 17 photograph of the Earth is upside down Current studies suggest a link between this so-called developmental topographical disorientation and mental health, as online experiences lead to a digitally poisoned awareness of space and place.

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