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How It Affects Your Mood When scientists want to study stress, they often ask people to perform several tasks at once."Generally, when people go for a walk, they feel better afterwards, and this is what we saw in the phone-free walking group," said Elizabeth Broadbent, one of the authors of the study and a professor of health psychology at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.One experiment found that the more people used a phone while walking on a treadmill, the more their levels of cortisol, the so-called stress hormone, tended to rise.

How It Affects Your Mood When scientists want to study stress, they often ask people to perform several tasks at once. That's because multitasking is a reliable way to stress people out. Also Read:Watch: This smartphone case turns into airbag to protect your device There's evidence that walking while using a phone functions this way, too, even if we're not aware of it in the moment. One experiment found that the more people used a phone while walking on a treadmill, the more their levels of cortisol, the so-called stress hormone, tended to rise. A 2023 study examined the psychological effects of walking in an outdoor park while looking at a phone -- or not. "Generally, when people go for a walk, they feel better afterwards, and this is what we saw in the phone-free walking group," said Elizabeth Broadbent, one of the authors of the study and a professor of health psychology at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. "In the phone-walking groups, these effects were reversed," she added. "Instead of feeling more positive after walking, people felt less positive -- less excited, less happy, less relaxed." She and her study co-authors attributed these negative effects to a phone user's lack of connection with the surrounding environment. It's now widely accepted that spending time walking in natural spaces is good for your mood and mental health. "It appears that to get these benefits, it's important that your attention is on the environment, rather than on your phone," she said.