Even without a smartphone in front of us, our attention spans are shot.
If you’re constantly drawn to mindless smartphone scrolling, putting the phone away is unlikely to make you a better worker. Sorry, bosses.
While much hay has been made of the mental health effects of doomscrolling – i.e. the hours you spend on social media taking in The Horrors – and the mush that generative AI is making of our critical thinking skills, it’s generally been thought that phones themselves were the culprit.
Remove the phone, heal the brain?
Not so, according to a new paper from the London School of Economics published in Frontiers in Computer Science.
The study followed 22 participants who were asked to spend two days working alone, in a soundproof room, with their phone and laptop.
On one day, phones were in easy reach of the participants, and in the other the phone was 1.5 metres away.
While the people who couldn’t reach their phone as easily did indeed spend less time on their phone, they spent around the same amount of time – one hour and 21 minutes on average – just mucking about on their laptop computer instead.
Participants received one “disruptive” smartphone notification in the inaccessible condition, but up to three under the accessible condition.
Disruptive notifications did not lead to differences in the overall duration of phone use.
During their non-work-related phone time, participants frequented the usual suspects: WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, TikTok and Instagram.
In the scenarios where phones were placed out of reach, participants tended to slack off by reading news articles, doing a spot of online shopping or checking Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp.
“The study shows that putting the smartphone away may not be sufficient to reduce disruption and procrastination, or increase focus,” lead author Dr Maxi Heitmayer said.
“The problem is not rooted within the device itself, but in the habits and routines that we have developed with our devices.”
Restricting access to smartphones, the study said, may not be a viable solution to the problem of employees skiving off.
It’s kind of nice to know that the indominable human spirit will always find a new way to be slightly lazy?
Stop doomscrolling just long enough to send a story tip to penny@medicalrepublic.com.au.
