Popular media has raised the issue of repetitive and obsessive use of smartphones. Data collected in the US and Finland present the first scientific evidence of what is called ‘checking habits’—repetitive checks of the menu screen, news, email, contacts, and social applications on the device.
A typical check lasts less than 30 seconds and involves opening the screen lock and accessing a single application, according to the study, ‘Habits Make Smartphone Use More Pervasive’, published in the journal Personal and Ubiquitous Computing.
According to a press release, a sizeable proportion of smartphone use consists solely of such checks. The checks do not occur randomly; they are associated with a small set of contexts that trigger them, such as reading emails when commuting or checking news when bored. Despite its prevalence, users did not regard such behaviour as an addiction, but described it in terms of overuse and an annoyance.
Such habits may change in the near future, as more informational ‘rewards’ are added to smartphones. The paper says novel informational rewards can lead to habitual behaviours 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. Researchers also said habit-formation for an application may also increase habit-formation for related applications.
According to the researchers, promoting habit-formation has its pros and cons. By making interesting content quickly accessible, developers are making the device more useful. However, the emerging habits increasingly take up more of a person’s free time.