I recently took a weekend trip to Canada with four other tech editors. Within seconds of our crossing the border back into the U.S., everyone immediately grabbed their smartphones and reactivated their data, hungry for the emails, text messages, and Twitter updates that had been inaccessible thanks to roaming charges. Had I not been driving, I would have eagerly joined them.
We were all excited to tap back into the digital world and are probably guilty of checking those smartphones just a bit too much in social settings, but are we addicted? A new study finds that while smartphones contribute to the development of a "checking habit," those habits are not yet harmful to our health.
"Brief usage sessions repeating over time, or 'checking behaviors,' comprise a large part of smartphone use," according to the report, which was published in the journal Personal and Ubiquitous Computing.
Researchers tracked smartphone users over the past few years on Android and Nokia devices and found that brief but frequent interactions with the devices were common, especially with the home screen, contact book, email, and social media and news apps.
"Comparing smartphones to laptops, we observed that smartphone use is significantly shorter in duration, more evenly spread throughout the day, and nearly twice as abundant (in terms of total time spent using the device)," report authors found.
In news that is likely to be welcomed by phone and app makers alike, this behavior could actually increase overall phone use. "We call these 'gateway habits.' In our data, the frequency of brief 'checks' to a phone showed a slight increase with the use of a small set of applications," the report said.
Not surprisingly, the more "rewards" you receive in checking your smartphone – whether it be new emails, Twitter updates, Facebook posts, text messages, or news within an app – the more likely you are to develop the habit of constantly checking your phone. It's also tied to certain triggers – grabbing that phone while waiting for the check, a bus, sitting through a commercial, or even a boring work meeting, for example.
But even if your friends might want you to put down that iPhone, your habit isn't likely to land you on an upcoming episode of "Intervention."
"Smartphone-related habits are not yet perceived as problematic," the study found. "Some users considered it an annoyance, [but] many positive experiences of repetitive uses were mentioned as well, mostly relating to entertainment, time-killing, and diversion."
Researchers acknowledged that their sample pools possibly "did not allow for addictions to be observed," but pointed to the fact that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders DSM-IV recognizes gambling but not Internet or media use as potential addictions.