Does the barrage of cell phone notifications make us dumber?

From an order that our boss sends us from her vacation to the promotion of the pizza place on the corner of our house, including liking an old photo of an ex-partner that we hadn’t heard from for years and the reminder that Car insurance expires: our life has become a hell of phone notifications. New studies indicate that, in addition to being annoying, these messages are making us dumber.

And even if our jobs don’t involve using our mobile devices, it is estimated that We receive on average between 60 and 85 notifications a daya volume of interruptions that, depending on how we have our phone configured, can come with sounds, vibrations or even the obstruction of parts of our screen.

This succession of small distractions has a hidden cost: Science indicates that frequent interruptions increase our cognitive loadthat is, the amount of information that our working memory must process. Because, although we feel very good at multitasking, the truth is that we have limited mental capacity and we are pushing it to the limit more than we should.

The interruption of our attention due to notifications leaves us more exhausted, it changes our mood and irritates us, since being constantly bothered makes us less effective at work, it moves us to focus on the task we are doing and, at the end of the day , seriously affects our mental well-being.

If we are working on a very complex task, three brief seconds of interruption are enough for our attention to be diverted and it can take up to five minutes to get back to the starting point. The same thing happens when we are in a delicate conversation with a friend or family member.

In fact, according to a study published by Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economicsnotifications affect our perception of time. A work signed by Professor Mosi Rosenboim indicated that We feel that time passes faster than in realitywhich encourages unhealthy behaviors such as eating more than we should or feeling the need to smoke.

Notifications also offer us an ephemeral but contagious satisfaction: how many likes will my last photo have had? Will I have a new email? Have they uploaded an episode of my favorite podcast? Brief Distractions Can Become Addictive

And while there are no magic solutions, there do seem to be healthier practices. For example, schedule breaks in which we will dedicate ourselves to viewing notifications. A 2019 scientific study showed that people who only see notifications three times a day are in a better mood, happier, and more productive than those who looked at them as they came.