According to SMU Psychology Lecturer Andree Hartanto, smartphones have changed the way we think and behave. He added that knowing that we now have instantly accessible knowledge in our pockets at any time, people are more likely to rely on their smartphones for information and to offload their thinking to the device. He said that smartphones allow some people to be slightly lazier in thinking than they would otherwise be, less creative and analytical but also more efficient, and the issue is about having trade-offs. Mr Hartanto recently completed a longitudinal study on more than 3,000 elderly people in the United States that showed that frequent computer use can act as a protective factor against cognitive decline as we age.