Top sport stars have been told that they are eroding their visual and communication skills because they use their smartphones too frequently.
Dr Sherylle Calder, aka The Eye Lady, is currently employed as visual awareness coach for the England rugby union team but has previously worked with international elite players in all sports including golf, football, motor racing and cricket. A recent client was Miami Dolphins quarterback Ryan Tannehill (pictured).
She said that the obsession throughout the world with smartphones and tablets – specifically among those under the age of 30 – is eroding humans’ ability to think and react as quickly as they should be able to naturally, leading to a deterioration in players’ performance.
The South African-born Dr Calder said: “In the modern world, the ability of players to have good awareness is deteriorating by the nature of mobile phones. It is definitely so. We have seen in the last five or six years, when we assess elite players in different sports, that there is a decline in skill levels. When you look at your phone, you are losing awareness, because you’re in here [the screen] all the time. There are no eye movements happening. Everything is pretty static. We are losing the ability to communicate well and all those skills are declining…We develop skills by climbing trees, walking on walls and falling off and learning all those visual motor skills, which people aren’t doing any more. Young kids spend a lot of time on mobile phones, so those instinctive natural skills are disappearing. If you don’t see something, you can’t make a decision.”
Dr Calder has advised England’s rugby players to scale back their use of smartphones ahead of next month’s Six Nations competition and the 2019 Rugby World Cup.
She said: “We can improve every player. We’ve got until the World Cup. Different players improve at different levels, but we can make the good ones better as well. As soon as they feel the difference they know it makes a difference, and you can feel it pretty quickly. They will feel it in time for the Six Nations.”