Smartphone and Human

Over 2.7 billion people have Smart Phone. Our Phones are designed to keep us hooked(engaged). They’re made addictive.

You have to understand how they grab your attention and learn to lead healthier life. Everything is coordinated to keep you engaged they your data when you wake up, what you search, where you are, smartphones are constantly collecting our behavior. They are not designed to help us they are designed to keep us busy in endless vortex. You Don’t realize it, but you are being programmed.

On an average adult spend 4 hours a day on his phone. Phone is becoming our body part. First thing in the morning people search for phone some even without opening their eyes.

People check their phone every 15 minutes and half of the time they check phone there is no alert, no notification. Which come from your brain and makes you anxious and goal is to get rid of that anxiety so you check in. And apparently, we feel stressed when we can’t get our phone or when our battery is about to die.

A research done in Australia among 3000 people under the age of 30 founded nine out of every 10 admit to feel this anxiety while having this battery dying. Steve Jobs revolutionized the world with the iPhone. But he never let his children use it. Because he did not want them to be dependent on technology and what is the current situation now even infants are given phone.

Start by turning of all notifications except human notification. When you receive a call from another person it is Usually because they want to communicate with you, but today’s apps simulate the feeling of that kind of social interaction, to make you spend more time on app. For Example, if Facebook send you a push notification that a friend is interested in an event near you, Facebook is actually making you do things leveraging the desire of your social connection so that you can use the app more.

Do you know that Notification was actually invented for saving time. When push notification were first introduced in Blackberry in 2003, it was seen as a way for you to check your phone less. You can see the email from lock screen so you don’t have to repeatedly open the phone to refresh inbox. But almost all apps make use of Push Notification. In the future we might see healthier ways of delivering notifications.

Gray scale your screen. Color is the easiest way to attract your eye’s attention on a screen. According to a study human eyes are sensitive to warm colors. In a test our eyes gravitate particularly to bright red color. That’s why so many apps have redesigned their icons to warmer color. It is also why notification bubbles are red. To neutralize this distracting effect, use gray scale mode to filter color. When color is filtered out your brain isn’t tricked. This is why billboards use warm color light to grab your attention and billboards which are illuminated tend to get more attention than billboard which in not illuminated. Apply Gray scale mode on your screen and you will notice, it changes some of the addictiveness.

Restrict your home screen to everyday tools. So, when you unlock your device home screen should not have anything except for the in-the-moment tools that help live your life. Like Maps, Calendar, Uber which won’t suck you in endless vortex. Apps that use infinite scrolling. Like Youtube’s autoplay also work in similar way, it reduces user sense of control and make it harder to stop. Research shows that people rely on visual cues more than internal cues to stop consuming. Basically people have lesser self-control when they follow and end up doing more than required. This is why many apps don’t have an endpoint to increase their usage, you have to build your home screen around the eventuality of distraction.

69% people pickup their phone within 5 minutes of waking up. Because when you pick your phone to turn off alarm you see another apps notification and you fall in trap. Get an Alarm Clock instead of using phone to set alarm. Enjoy Distraction free morning.

Buy Books or Kindle Tablet. Place a Book near your bed side so that if you are not able to sleep you can read it till you feel like sleeping. It will enhance your sleep so you will be able to perform better in day. Advice of reading a book before bedtime is because our brain needs an incentive to get over existing habit.

Avoid using Face Unlock or Figure Unlock create friction. This will give you push back and when you will reach for it without reason.

You can easily manage what you can track. Quality time for Android and Moment for iOS which tells you how much you have used phone in day and how many times you have picked up the phone, which applications you are using the most and trust me it will be an eye opener for you.

Useful Links

Don’t let your phone control you.

Related posts:

Pink FloydMarooned tongue is the easiest a group] Maabig ya 09/03/2005 10:15 AM 3 Shakey Graves — Roll waste your time on a walk with me to be so powerful? Players Anthem Ft. Outkast Can’t Cry Hard…

What sets apart a successful entrepreneur from people who are not successful, whether in their own small business, or in a job? Looking externally, the entrepreneur is a normal, everyday person just…

Instant articles are for publishers to create fast and interactive stories on Facebook. They are fast loading versions of web stories that have been optimized for mobile devices. Recently, Facebook…