People who are easily distracted by smartphones are more physiologically reactive, less attuned to their bodies: Study

Over the past few decades, some studies have raised important questions about the psychological implications of the excessive use of smartphones and other portable devices. Findings suggest that people who use smartphones too much can progressively develop cognitive impairments and attentional deficits, yet the factors contributing to these effects are not yet fully understood.

Researchers at Hokkaido University recently carried out a study exploring the link between smartphone use and psychological processes, specifically looking at attention and physiological reactions.

Their findings, published in Communications Psychology, suggest that people who have an attentional bias towards smartphone stimuli typically display a lower interoceptive awareness (i.e., they are less able to perceive and understand their bodily sensations) and are more physiologically reactive.

“This project began as an interdisciplinary exploration between philosophy and psychology, aiming to understand the relationship between technology and the human body,” Yusuke Haruki, first author of the paper, told Medical Xpress.

“Although digital devices like smartphones have become deeply embedded in our daily lives, we still know surprisingly little about how they shape our bodily awareness and perception. We became especially interested in how attention towards smartphone-related cues in everyday situations might influence our awareness of bodily sensations.”

Haruki and his colleagues drew parallels between excessive smartphone use and behavioral addictions, such as gambling and substance use disorders. Building on this parallel, they set out to explore how smartphone-related distractions are connected to body awareness (i.e., interoception) and physiological reactivity.

The researchers recruited 58 healthy young adults and asked them to complete a simple visual task. The objective of this task was to rapidly spot target letters that were displayed on a computer screen.

“In the background of this task, we showed two types of images: smartphone-related images (such as a phone screen showing an incoming call) and control (scrambled) images,” explained Haruki. “To understand if being distracted depended on how difficult the task was, we made the letter task easier or harder by changing how many target letters appeared on screen at the same time.”

Based on the time it took for participants to respond to stimuli (i.e., their reaction times) in these different conditions, the researchers divided them into two different groups, using a clustering method.

The first group contained people who were consistently distracted by smartphone images, irrespective of how difficult the task was, while the second contained people who were only distracted by these images when the task was easier.

“Next, we compared these two groups using questionnaires to see if the consistently distracted group reported lower awareness of their own bodily signals,” said Haruki.

“Finally, we also checked if this same group showed stronger heart rate increases when seeing smartphone images, indicating greater physiological reactivity to these cues.”

Notably, the researchers found that even if smartphone-related images were irrelevant to the visual task they employed in their experiment, they captured the attention of approximately half of participants. These participants struggled to pay attention to the task at hand, while also exhibiting stronger physiological reactions when smartphone-related images appeared.

“Participants who were more distracted by smartphone cues not only performed worse on the attention task but also showed accelerated heart rates when exposed to these images,” said Haruki.

“Importantly, these individuals also reported lower interoceptive awareness, meaning they were less attuned to internal bodily signals such as their heartbeat—a pattern mirroring behavioral addictions like gambling or substance use.”

Overall, the results of this recent study suggest that some people might find it hard to ignore stimuli originating from their smartphone, such as incoming calls, texts, emails, etc., both due to mental processes and their physiological responses. Haruki and his colleagues hope that the new insight they gathered will help to better understand the link between smartphone use, attention-related processes and bodily self-awareness.

“Our work could also potentially inform interventions aimed at promoting healthier digital habits, especially among younger populations,” added Haruki.

“In our next studies, we plan to study what happens in the brain when people are distracted by smartphones, and how this pattern develops over time. We’re especially interested in how these attentional patterns relate to brain activity and whether early signs can be found during adolescence or young adulthood.”

© 2025 Science X Network