You're waiting for a friend or colleague, or you're waiting for a doctor's appointment. How long do you think it takes before you check your smartphone? Two minutes? Three?
An experiment conducted on behalf of Kaspersky Lab by the University of Würzburg and the University of Nottingham-Trent showed that participants who were left alone in a waiting room endured on average only 44 seconds before touching their smartphone.
Men couldn't even manage half of this time, waiting on average just 21 seconds, compared to women who “ate”» 57 seconds.
To deepen the relationship between people and digital devices, the researchers asked the participants after ten minutes how much time they thought had passed before they took the phone in their hands. Most answered between two and three minutes, highlighting a significant disconnect between perceived and actual behavior.
Commenting on the findings, Jens Binder from Nottingham-Trent University said: "The experiment shows that people are much more attached to these devices than they realise. Now, turning to our smartphones when we are alone has become second nature. We simply don't wait any longer. The immediacy of information and interactions that smart devices provide makes them a digital companion that connects us to the outside world, rather than a technological accessory."
Additional research from the same universities suggests that this mania for checking our phones could be a result of the “” (FOMO) when we’re not online. In a companion study, participants who used their smartphones more intensely had higher levels of FOMO.
"The more participants use their mobile phone, the more they fear losing something when they don't have access to it. It's hard to say what causes what: Do people use their phone more because they are afraid of losing something? Or do they use it so much that they are worried about losing something?" commented Astrid Carolus from the University of Würzburg.
Also, the study found that the more we use our smartphones, the more stressed we become. But paradoxically, when participants were asked about their overall happiness there was no difference between «light» and «heavy» users. Thus, the pressure caused by smartphone use does not appear to have a significant impact on our overall wellbeing.
During the ten‑minute waiting session, participants used their smartphones for almost half the time (five minutes) on average . As earlier research by Kaspersky Lab has shown, we now rely heavily on mobile devices and often use them as an extension of our brain, so we don't have to remember various things. For example, the majority of respondents could not recall their partner's phone number, but could still remember the number of their family home.
“Today, smartphonesare an integral part of our lives, but we must remember that they are a commodity that people often take for granted. Having them around us all the time, we forget how valuable they really are, because of the personal memories and other data they contain,” said David Emm, Senior Security Researcher at Kaspersky Lab. “They are not only valuable to us, but also to criminals. Ifour personal information is compromised in any way – whether due to theft or a malware attack – we risk losing contact with our friends and sources of information,” he added.
For two years, Kaspersky Lab has been conducting research into the social consequences of digitalization and how this trend makes people potentially more vulnerable to cybercrime. An overview of the results is available at amnesia.kaspersky.com.
