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Study exposes habit formation in smartphone users

Date:
August 18, 2011
Source:
Aalto University
Summary:
Smartphone users develop the habit of frequently checking their phones for e-mail, social media, and news, shows a new study. The researchers were surprised to find users engaging in checking behaviors throughout the waking hours. Furthermore, a sizable proportion of smartphone use consists solely of checkings.
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Popular media has raised the issue of repetitive and obsessive use of smartphones. Data collected in Finland and in USA presents the first scientific evidence for what the authors dubbed "checking habits": repetitive checks of the menu screen, news, email, contacts, and social applications on the device. A typical checking lasts less than 30 seconds and involves opening the screen lock and accessing a single application.

The researchers were surprised to find users engaging in checking behaviors throughout the waking hours. Furthermore, a sizable proportion of smartphone use consists solely of checkings. Checkings do not occur randomly; they are associated with a small set of contexts that trigger them, such as reading email when commuting or checking news while bored. Despite its prevalence, users did not regard checking behavior as an addiction, but described it in terms of overuse and as an annoyance.

Checking habits may change in the near future as more and more informational "rewards" are added to smartphones. The paper argues that novel informational rewards can lead to habitual behaviors if they are very quickly accessible. In a field experiment, when the phone's contact book application was augmented with real-time information about contacts' whereabouts and doings, users started regularly checking the application. The researchers also observed that habit-formation for one application may increase habit-formation for related applications.

The authors conclude that promoting habit-formation has its pros and cons. − By making interesting content quickly accessible, developers are on the one hand making the device more useful but, on the other hand, the habits that emerge essentially conquer more and more of a person's free time, says Tye Rattenbury, who was at Intel Labs at the time of writing.

"What concerns us here is that if your habitual response to, say, boredom, is that you pick up the phone to find interesting stimuli, you will be systematically distracted from the more important things happening around you. Habits are automatically triggered behaviors and compromise the more conscious control that some situations require and studies are already starting to associate smartphone use to dire consequences like driving accidents and poor work-life balance. Unfortunately, as decades of work in psychology shows, habits are not easy to change," Antti Oulasvirta, of HIIT, continues.


Story Source:

Materials provided by Aalto University. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


Journal Reference:

  1. Antti Oulasvirta, Tye Rattenbury, Lingyi Ma, Eeva Raita. Habits make smartphone use more pervasive. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 2011; DOI: 10.1007/s00779-011-0412-2

Cite This Page:

Aalto University. "Study exposes habit formation in smartphone users." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 18 August 2011. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110725101222.htm>.
Aalto University. (2011, August 18). Study exposes habit formation in smartphone users. ScienceDaily. Retrieved October 5, 2024 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110725101222.htm
Aalto University. "Study exposes habit formation in smartphone users." ScienceDaily. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110725101222.htm (accessed October 5, 2024).

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