A joint study conducted by Carnegie Mellon University and Telefónica suggests that there could be benefits to making a change to your smartphone habits.
Participants in the study were required to turn their push notifications off for just 24 hours. All 30 participants successfully completed the challenge, but reported different effects of cutting themselves off.
While some offered perspectives such as “It was amazing! I felt liberated!” others expressed paranoia, and even left their screen turned on at all times in order to avoid missing an update.
Two years after the study was conducted, 59% of participants who said they’d enable the Do Not Disturb function in future had followed through on their promise.
Overall the study concluded that “For some participants, being without notifications was a positive experience: being more relaxed, less stressed, and more productive at work. For others, fear of missing out and violating others’ expectations turned it into a negative experience.”
“On the one hand, notifications have become integral to the tools that connect us with others, and they are needed to keep up with people’s expectations.”
“On the other hand, our participants became aware of the negative effects that notifications have on them and some started to devise coping strategies. Notifications as a channel to engage with people may be threatened if this dilemma is not addressed.”
The study can be read in full here.
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