Do Notifications Effect Time Spent on Your Phone?

The Answer Might Not Be As Simple As You Think

Over the course of a day I recorded my notifications and the time spent on each app I used on my phone. What I found led me to think that notifications don’t have an impact on the time spent on your phone. But it’s a bit more complicated than that.

As you can see on these graphs the notifications I received and the apps I used the most seem to have no correlation with each other. This is what I thought at first too but I realized something after looking at when I received the notifications and when I spent time on these apps. Even though I wasn’t interacting with the apps that I had gotten a notification for that day I would still pick up my phone and start using other apps because I got a notification. I would dismiss the notification and then begin to use other apps. For example, when I’d get a text notification I would pick up my phone and dismiss it and then start browsing YouTube or Reddit and spend a long time on these apps.

This is the purpose of notifications but it is interesting to see how notifications for other apps can draw you back to those apps that suck away so much of your time. I have notifications for both Reddit and YouTube turned off but notifications from other apps would get me to turn on my phone and my attention would drift back towards time consuming apps like Reddit and YouTube.

Apps like YouTube and Reddit are designed to keep your attention for as long as possible. That is why so many apps scroll in one long feed because it keeps your attention for a very long time. But clearly that isn’t the only thing that is important when designing an app. Another very important factor is giving people a reason to come back. For some reason even when I am notified by different apps I see myself getting pulled back to these time consuming apps.

It’s all in the design.