Title
"Silence Your Phones": Smartphone Notifications Increase Inattention and Hyperactivity Symptoms.
Abstract
As smartphones increasingly pervade our daily lives, people are ever more interrupted by alerts and notifications. Using both correlational and experimental methods, we explored whether such interruptions might be causing inattention and hyperactivity-symptoms associated with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) even in people not clinically diagnosed with ADHD. We recruited a sample of 221 participants from the general population. For one week, participants were assigned to maximize phone interruptions by keeping notification alerts on and their phones within their reach/sight. During another week, participants were assigned to minimize phone interruptions by keeping alerts off and their phones away. Participants reported higher levels of inattention and hyperactivity when alerts were on than when alerts were off. Higher levels of inattention in turn predicted lower productivity and psychological well-being. These findings highlight some of the costs of ubiquitous connectivity and suggest how people can reduce these costs simply by adjusting existing phone settings.
Year
DOI
Venue
2016
10.1145/2858036.2858359
CHI
Keywords
Field
DocType
Smartphones, interruptions, pervasive computing, multitasking, experimental study, attention management, subjective well-being, psychology
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder,Population,Computer science,Simulation,Subjective well-being,Human–computer interaction,Phone,Attention management,Ubiquitous computing,Human multitasking,Silence,Applied psychology
Conference
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
19
1.10
13
Authors
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Kostadin Kushlev1554.22
Jason Proulx2191.10
Elizabeth W. Dunn3292.40