"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.
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Adult participants assigned to a week-long experimental condition to maximize their phone's notifications reported significantly higher levels of inattention.
“Kushlev et al. (2016) found that adult participants assigned to a week-long experimental condition to maximize their phone’s notifications reported significantly higher levels of inattention.”
From Technologizing Bronfenbrenner: Neo-ecological Theory. (2023) · cites this paper as Kushlev et al., 2016
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- Authors
- Kushlev, K., Proulx, J., & Dunn, E. W.
- Affiliations
- University of Virginia (US)
- University of British Columbia (CA)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
- Publisher
- ACM
- Published
- 2016-05-07
- Pages
- 1011-1020
- OpenAlex
- W2394679689
- Cited by
- 245
- References
- 13
- Citations by year
- 2026: 19 · 2025: 23 · 2024: 25 · 2023: 19 · 2022: 23 · 2021: 36 · 2020: 31 · 2019: 35 · 2018: 14 · 2017: 16 · 2016: 4
- FWCI
- 45.48
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Information Systems and Management › Personal Information Management and User Behavior
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Impact of Technology on Adolescents
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
- Keywords
- mobile notifications, inattention, hyperactivity symptoms, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, ubiquitous connectivity, productivity, psychological well-being, digital distraction
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