Notifications on smartphones are a handy way of checking social media and messaging updates right at one place; however, they are quite distracting as well and increase the chances of mistakes while a user is carrying out a task, researchers have warned.
Researchers have equated the distraction from notifications to those caused by actively making a call or sending a text message or email, researchers have revealed through a study. According to researchers at Florida State University, the level of how much notifications affected one’s concentration levels was really shocking.
“Although these notifications are generally short in duration, they can prompt task-irrelevant thoughts, or mind-wandering, which has been shown to damage task performance,” researchers said.
Researchers further added that these notifications alone significantly disrupt performance on an attention-demanding task even though participants do not directly interact with a mobile device during the task and this increases the chances of mistakes in the task by several times.
Study authors, Ainsley Mitchum, and Courtney Yehnert ran volunteers through an attention-monitoring test to reach their conclusions. Participants were found to perform significantly worse on a task when their phones were buzzing or ringing. In fact, they were three times more likely to make mistakes.
“If you really want to keep your mind on a task, just ignoring your phone notifications is not enough. You need to disable them altogether,” the researchers said. An earlier study from Rice University found that phones can be detrimental to learning process.
The research said while users initially believed the mobile devices would improve their ability to perform well with homework and tests and ultimately get better grades, the opposite was reported at the end of the study.
The study underscores that simply being aware of a missed call or text can have the same effect.
The findings are significant because many public information campaigns intend to deter problematic cellphone use – while driving, for example – often emphasise waiting to respond to messages and calls.
