Smartphones taking toll on sports skills

A sports vision specialist working with the England rugby squad has claimed smartphones have been responsible for a decline in sports skill and visual awareness.

South African Dr Sherylle Calder, who has worked with top golfers including Ernie Els and tennis stars such as Ana Ivanovic, has instructed England’s players to spend less time on their phones if they want to improve. She said visual motor skills learned through ‘climbing trees and falling off walls’ as children were not being practised anymore.

‘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,’ said Calder in a report in The Guardian. ‘In the modern world the ability of players to have good awareness is deteriorating. When you look at your phone there are no eye movements happening and everything is pretty static.