Why Can't We Stop Looking at our Phones?
The Inquiry
BBC
4.6 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 21 February 2017
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Our phones are powerful tools with lots of benefits – keeping in touch, accessing information and services and managing our lives. We are using them more and more, constantly picking them up. Even in situations where it is considered inappropriate, disadvantageous, or even dangerous, many people still find it hard to resist the urge to check their smartphones. Why do we find these mini computers in our pockets so compelling?
Our expert witnesses explain how tech developers are tapping into established behavioural psychology theories about what gets us hooked. We hear how experiments conducted on pigeons can help explain why we cannot resist checking to see whether we have got email or a new like on social media and we reveal the tricks that companies use to keep us coming back for more.
(Photo: People using their smartphones on the platform of a train station in Bangkok. A recent study showed smartphone owners are often connected all day. Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Thanks for downloading the inquiry. |
| 0:09.0 | This week we're hearing from four people who've all struggled with the same thing. |
| 0:16.9 | My sleep was suffering. This was a major problem. |
| 0:22.4 | I found myself more and more distracted. |
| 0:24.0 | I kind of feel the eyes of my colleagues all around me and I wonder if they're watching me. |
| 0:30.0 | It also wasn't good for my sex life. |
| 0:34.0 | I must confess, it's happened to me too. |
| 0:38.0 | Just the other day, I ordered my lunch, and then, when it was ready, |
| 0:42.0 | completely ignored the man behind the counter because I'd become engrossed in my phone. |
| 0:47.0 | Ten years ago the original Apple iPhone went on sale and the smartphone |
| 0:58.4 | revolution began. Ten years later many of us hold in our palms or pockets incredible tools to connect, create and learn. |
| 1:08.0 | But like our expert witnesses this week, if you own a smartphone, I'm sure you've got a story about how you or someone you know might be using it a bit too much. |
| 1:21.0 | I'm James Fletcher, and on the inquiry this week we're asking why can't we stop looking at our phones. Part 1, phone numbers. |
| 1:35.0 | Phone Numbers. One time we had a guest lecture in my class and I went and sat in the audience. |
| 1:57.0 | This is Larry Rosen. He's a professor of psychology at California State University. |
| 2:05.0 | And literally right next to me there was a student knowing he was sitting next to me who spent |
| 2:11.0 | the entire lecture on his phone answering text messages and checking |
| 2:14.9 | Facebook. Larry Rosen is the author of The Distracted Mind, Ancient Brains in a |
| 2:20.2 | high-tech world, and his research focuses on technology and its impact. |
| 2:25.0 | So how much do we look at our phones? |
| 2:30.0 | It's a question Larry Rosen set out to answer recently in an experiment involving more than 200 undergraduates. |
| 2:38.0 | I had them put an app on their phone that counts how many times you unlock your phone each day and then |
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