It’s no secret that folks are addicted to their phones these days, and are likely checking them every few minutes to make sure they don’t miss any important notifications. Well, while those notifications may be keeping us constantly in the loop, they are apparently also making us very unhappy.
A new study by researchers at Nottingham Trent University finds that a third of the smartphone notifications we receive actually put us in a bad mood. The study looked at 50 subjects over a five-week period, with those in the study getting about half a million notifications during the period. Overall they found that 32% of those pop ups resulted in negative feelings leaving the subjects either hostile, upset, nervous, afraid or ashamed.
Believe it or not, the notifications that made people feel the worst were ones centered around things like general phone updates and Wi-Fi availability, with work messages, particularly those that arrived in bulk, also negatively impacting subjects’ mood. But not all notifications were bad. In fact, those that came from friends actually put folks in a good mood, giving them a feeling of belonging and a social connection.