HUFFPOST TECH
Turn Off The Notifications On Your Phone. They're Ruining Your Life!
Just feeling your iPhone vibrate can impair your ability to focus.
Emily Peck Executive Editor, Business and Technology Posted: 07/13/2015 | Edited: 07/13/2015 04:45 PM EDT
You know that texting or talking on your cell phone while driving or walking is dangerously
distracting, but new research finds that simply hearing your phone ring, ding or vibrate can
destroy your focus. Even if you don’t pick up or look at the phone, you’ll start to think about
who was trying to reach you, what they wanted and whether it was important, a new
study from researchers at Florida State University found.
The level of distraction from simply hearing the phone ring was comparable to the effects of
texting while driving, Cary Stothart, a doctoral student in cognitive psychology who led the
research, told The Huffington Post. "We didn't expect to see such a large magnitude in
distraction," said Stothart. The research was published late last month in the Journal of
Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance.
Push notifications are the hot new plague in smartphones -- from a “news” alert when
Donald Trump enters the presidential race to a notification from LinkedIn that someone
you’ve never heard of wants to “connect" to a notice from Farm Heroes Saga that you have
five new lives. Here's one from Instagram, informing our tech editor that someone liked one
of his photos.
These are not important events!
For the study, some 150 undergraduate
students from Florida State University
were asked to perform a simple task --
looking at numbers flash on a screen and
pressing a button when they saw a “3.”
During their second run through the task,
they were split into three groups: One
group was called on the phone, the second
received a text and the third was not
interrupted. Researchers obtained
participants' phone numbers off a
questionnaire, and participants didn't
know they were being contacted as part of
the study.
The phone calls were the most distracting, the study found. Those who received a call were
28 percent more likely to mess up the task than they were during the first round, those who
received a text were 23 percent more likely to screw up, and those who received neither were
7 percent more likely to do worse (just due to general boredom, said Stothart).It's worth
noting that almost all of the students had their phones set to vibrate and didn't take them
out or look at them during the study. Calls were likely the most distracting because they're
increasingly rare, especially among undergrads, Stothart said. "If they receive a call, it might
be an emergency."
So, there are two solutions to this problem. First, when you're driving or doing something
else that needs your full attention, you could truly silence your phone by setting it to “Do
Not Disturb,” which is available for iPhones and some Android devices. Second, you could
be a little more selective about which apps are allowed to notify you. You can do this on your
iPhone by going to Settings >> Notifications and then selecting the apps that you wish to
interrupt you.
For Android, it's pretty similar -- just go to your Settings and hit Notifications. It'll look
something like this, from a Samsung Galaxy S6.
Good luck and drive safely.
