putting our phones on silent mode only makes them more tempting, study says

blame fomo for how hard it can be for all of us to actually stop looking at our phones all the time.

by dave yasvinski

published jul 05, 2022

3 minute read

join the conversation

3 minute read

join the conversation

putting our phones in silent mode only makes them more tempting

fear of missing out can make it hard for people to put their phones away. (getty)

giving a smartphone the silent treatment can have the opposite effect when it comes to curbing addiction, making some people twice as likely to reach for another fix. the small study, published in the journal computers in human behaviour, found that people who experience high levels of fomo (fear of missing out) or have a strong “need to belong” pick up their phones more frequently when in silent mode and often make up for lost time by spending longer on their devices when they do. the findings reveal there may not be a one-size-fits-all approach to getting people to put down their devices and live in the moment.

“the general approach to overcoming addiction or any kind of substance overuse or dependency is by cutting back on that substance,” said s. shyam sundar, james p. jimirro professor of media effects in the donald p. bellisario college of communications at penn state. “the industry approach to curbing smartphone overuse has generally been to try and figure out ways to cut off your access to phone, reduce the number of notifications or to give you the option of turning off the sound. while these are commonsensical approaches, we really do not know if they are psychologically effective.

“this seems to be one of those instances when cutting back can actually backfire or boomerang.”

researchers arrived at their results by studying the screen time of 138 iphone users with a focus on how people with certain personality traits react when their phones fall silent.

participants were presented with a series of questions to determine if they had high levels of fomo or need-to-belong. people with fomo tended to agree with statements such as “do you get worried when you find out friends are having fun without you?” while people who felt a need to belong agreed with statements such as “you need other people to like you.”

they found that all participants reached for their phones more frequently when they were set to silent mode (an average of 98.2 times a day) than when in audio-alert or vibration mode (52.9 times a day). participants who scored high on the fomo scale checked their phones about 50 times a day when in vibration mode but a whopping 120 times when their phones were set to silent. these people also stayed on their devices for significantly longer when it was in silent mode.

participants who felt an intense need-to belong did not pick up their phones more frequently when in silent mode but stayed on them for longer periods of time when set to silent or vibration-only.

the findings suggest that, for some people, efforts to decrease phone use will only make matters worse. “imagine, in class, the instructor tells the students to turn off their phones, we think that now everyone is paying attention to the instructor,” sundar said. “but, what our research shows is the opposite, in that they are preoccupied thinking about all the things that they’re missing, so it might be even more distracting.”

according to mengqi liao, first author of the paper and a doctoral student in mass communication, people react to notifications in personal ways and developers should consider new ways to make their devices healthier for consumers.

“it might be important to personalize how notifications are presented to users based on their individual differences,” she said. “for example, in this case, basing it on their level of fear of missing out and the level of their need to belong, which are not hard to measure nowadays. “another thing developers should explore is the use of, for example, social media and online entertainment to really listen to what are the notifications that that person just cannot miss and ones they probably don’t mind missing.”

dave yasvinski is a writer with healthing.ca