Although we are quite used to keeping in touch with the world thanks to our mobile devices, many times we can feel that it takes up too much of our time. Certainly, the more applications we download, the more potential notifications we can receive and, with it, the concentration is continually diminished.
Fortunately, all phones come with the functionality to set durations for Do Not Disturb mode, silence all notifications without further ado, or control which apps are allowed to interrupt us and which are not. Works?
Muting notifications on our smartphone may seem like a way to help combat the ‘addiction’ that many people suffer from mobile phones, but a new study carried out by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania (United States) says the opposite. It might not be as effective as previously thought.
Time to silence notifications?
The researchers interviewed more than 100 people (138 specifically) about their smartphone usage and whether they had notifications turned on or off. The majority of participants (42 percent) chose vibrate-only mode, followed by 36.2 percent who used normal mode, 13 percent who used sound-only mode, and 8.7 percent who used silent mode. They found that muting notifications could be “psychologically distressing” and makes smartphone users check their phone more, not less (as it might seem).
“Participants who put their phone on silent mode were much more likely to pick up their phones compared to those who did not completely disable audio and vibration cues for notifications,” the researchers comment.
Having notifications turned off was particularly stressful for people suffering from Fear of Missing Out (FoMO), a unique term introduced in 2004 to describe a phenomenon seen on social networking websites. In essence, it is the belief that friends and family are having fun without us and feel this constant sense of ‘missing something’, that we are being left out. The new results seem to contradict the findings of another study published last month, which precisely identified the deactivation of mobile notifications as the best tactic to reduce the use of the phone.
“Our findings suggest that turning off notifications appears to be more, rather than less, psychologically distressing for mobile device users,” said Mengqi Liao, a Ph.D. candidate at Pennsylvania State University and co-author of the paper published in the journal Computers in Human Behaviour.
Experts also point out that aside from the cognitive phenomenon cited above as FoMO, muting notifications can also fuel the need to belong ( NtB).
“NtB is extremely ubiquitous among humans and has a significant impact on individuals’ cognitions, emotions, and behaviors,” the authors say. Muting notifications for people with FoMO and NtB seemed to be more “psychologically distressing,” the team says.
“This discovery requires a rethinking of current approaches to curbing mobile phone overuse and motivates the design of intermediate solutions , such as lock screen notifications and selective notifications,” the authors conclude.
And you? Do you disable notifications?
Referencia: Mengqi Liao, S. Shyam Sundar, Sound of silence: Does Muting Notifications Reduce Phone Use?, Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 134, 2022, 107338, ISSN 0747-5632, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2022.107338.
