Scroll and control: How smartphones control our attention
Smartphones have transformed in recent years from a simple means of communication into a universal tool for everyday life. However, as digital technologies penetrate deeper into everyday life, the opposite trend is also increasing — the desire for digital minimalism and the temporary abandonment of gadgets. Recent research shows that without constant notifications and screen time, people perceive the passage of time differently, become more attentive to others and engage in more conscious communication more often. For more information about how smartphones affect cognitive processes, emotional state and social habits of a modern person, see the Izvestia article.
What is the price of constant switching?
An experiment conducted by a Korean Vogue journalist clearly shows how a person's daily attention is changing in a digital environment. For a week, she abandoned her usual smartphone and switched to a regular push-button phone, which only allowed her to make calls and send messages. Already in the early days, it became noticeable how much the smartphone was embedded in everyday micro-habits, the hand automatically reached for the pocket at any free moment.
However, as the notifications and the stream of updating feeds disappeared, so did the nature of the attention. The author noticed that she became less distracted and concentrated longer on current tasks in conversation with her interlocutors. Such observations are in good agreement with what cognitive psychology research shows.
Ekaterina Kosova, a junior researcher at the HSE's Cognitive Psychology Laboratory for Digital Interface Users, explains that multitasking itself reduces productivity. Classic experiments on switching between tasks demonstrate a steady effect: the more often a person switches between different types of activities, the higher the so-called switching cost.
— Neuroscience studies also record differences between people who actively practice media multitasking and those who switch between streams of information less frequently. So, in one of the studies, participants who were used to interacting with several media channels at the same time demonstrated poorer performance in the face of distracting stimuli and higher activity in areas of the brain associated with attention control, the expert told Izvestia.
Kosova emphasizes that most of these studies are correlational in nature — they show a statistical relationship between the style of information consumption and the features of cognitive control, but do not prove a causal relationship.
Nevertheless, the experience with a push—button phone clearly illustrates the main thing - a smartphone does not just provide access to information, it forms the rhythm of switching attention, affecting the distribution of cognitive resources throughout the day.
How do we process information?
Social media feeds, news aggregators, and short content formats form a constant browsing and scrolling mode in which the user is confronted with dozens of information stimuli in a short time. As a result, attention is distributed among a multitude of messages, and there is less and less time for long-term reflection on each of them.
The classical theory of processing levels, proposed by psychologists Fergus Craik and Robert Lockhart back in the 1970s, helps explain possible changes. According to this model, information can be analyzed at different levels, from surface characteristics to deep semantic comprehension, and it is the depth of processing that determines how well it is remembered.
— The most superficial is related to perceptual characteristics, for example, whether a word is written in large or small letters. This is followed by the phonemic level, when a person pays attention to the sound of a word, for example, whether it rhymes with another. The deeper level is semantic, related to the analysis of meaning. The deepest one involves correlating information with a person's personal experience," explains Ekaterina Kosova.
According to the researcher, the digital environment, especially based on endless scrolling and short information fragments, more often stimulates the surface scanning mode. The user quickly scans through many messages, but rarely lingers on one of them long enough to proceed to a deep semantic analysis.
The hypothesis is indirectly supported by research on reading in a digital environment. For example, two meta-reviews published in 2018 showed that text comprehension when reading from a screen is on average lower than when reading from paper. This phenomenon has even received a separate name — the "paper superiority effect."
According to Ekaterina Kosova, scrolling by itself and a large number of opportunities for switching attention do not destroy the ability to concentrate and move on to deeper levels of information processing. Rather, we are talking about different styles of interaction with information — in a digital and in an analog environment. In other words, giving up a smartphone by itself does not turn a person into a "supercomputer" capable of analyzing all incoming stimuli as deeply as possible.
At the same time, psychologists pay attention to the importance of periodic "reloading" of attention. As psychologist Alina Dodonova notes, the brain needs short periods of rest from the constant flow of information.
— It is useful to devote 20-30 minutes every day to a state of complete calm — without gadgets, notifications, or even mental planning of future affairs. You can just lie down, take a walk or calmly breathe to pleasant music. The main thing is to do nothing at this moment and not feel guilty that time is passing "in vain," the expert explains.
Smartphone as an element of the "attention economy"
In the framework of media psychology and research on human-computer interaction (human-computer interaction. — Izvestia) The smartphone is actually becoming the central element of the so-called attention economy, explains Ekaterina Kosova. The reason lies not so much in the device itself as in its constant availability.
— The smartphone accompanies the user in almost all contexts of daily activities, which creates a special cognitive situation. Digital services are now able to regularly initiate interactions through notifications, content recommendations, and various social signals. As a result, the user's attention turns into a resource for which different platforms compete," she explains.
The researcher notes that interface design also plays an important role here. He is able to systematically direct and hold attention with the help of special signals, such as activity indicators, comments, or popularity metrics.
In one experiment conducted by Kosova and her colleagues, the interfaces of news sites with such social elements aroused a higher level of trust among users compared to versions without them.
What does FOMO lead to?
It is not surprising that against this background, one of the most discussed phenomena of recent years has become FOMO — fear of missing out, or the fear of missing an important event, information, or social interaction.
The term itself was introduced into the psychological literature by researcher Andrew Przybylski and his colleagues in 2013. They described FOMO as a stable motivational attitude associated with the feeling that other people can experience more interesting or significant events.As Ekaterina Kosova explains, modern research shows a fairly stable relationship between FOMO and the intensity of digital technology use.
— So, one of the large meta-analyses, which included more than 55 thousand participants, revealed a stable positive correlation between the level of FOMO and online activity. Similar results are demonstrated by studies on the problematic use of smartphones, the expert adds.
The mechanism of this connection is explained relatively simply: the fear of missing something increases sensitivity to social signals such as new messages, likes, or updates from news feeds. In this situation, a smartphone becomes a tool for constant monitoring of the social environment, and the user begins to check the device more often and spend more time in applications.
— First of all, we are talking about a statistical relationship, and not about a direct cause-and-effect relationship. In other words, it is not yet clear whether active Internet use leads to the development of FOMO, or, conversely, people with a more pronounced fear of missing out on something important are more likely to turn to a smartphone, she concludes.
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