What keeps us hooked to our cellphones

Since humans are hard-wired to connect with others, text messaging and social media make it easier for them to disclose personal information and respond to people

Scientists have explained why we are tempted to pick up our smartphones and start scrolling through social media or text messages at any moment, even when the devices disrupt our face-to-face social interactions.

Smartphones have become a constant companion for many of us. In a recent study by the Pew Research Center, nearly 50 per cent of adults reported they “couldn’t live without” their phones. Researchers at the University of Arizona and Wayne State University in the US examined existing research on ‘technoference’, or the potential interference smartphones and other technologies can have in our face-toface social interactions.

They propose an explanation for why humans are so drawn to their smartphones, even when the devices take us out of the moment in our close relationships. It is because of our evolutionary history and the fact that humans are hard-wired to connect with others, according to the study.

In the course of evolutionary history, we have relied on close relationships with small networks of family and friends for survival as individuals and as a species, researchers said.

These relationships were based on trust and cooperation, which is built when people disclose personal information about themselves and are responsive to others, they said. Smartphones, and the constant access they provide to text messaging and social media, make it easier than ever for people to disclose personal information and respond to others in their social networks. These networks are much larger and more far-flung than those of our ancestors.

“The draw or pull of a smartphone is connected to very old modules in the brain that were critical to our survival, and central to the ways we connect with others are self-disclosure and responsiveness,” said David Sbarra, a psychology professor at the University of Arizona.

“Evolution shaped self-disclosure and responsiveness in the context of small kin networks, and we now see these behaviours being cued more or less constantly by social networking sites and through our phones,” Sbarra said in a statement.