Briefly about the research of scientists from the University of Pisa tells Naked Science. The authors of the work conducted an experiment. They observed 88 women and 96 men in 820 different situations, such as parks, restaurants, public transport, waiting rooms and dinner parties. Some participants deliberately started checking their smartphones: they pressed buttons or tapped their fingers on the screen for five seconds. At the same time, they either looked or did not look at the screen. The other people didn’t know they were being watched.

The experiment showed that half of the people started looking at their phone within 30 seconds after someone else touched the smartphone. Scientists noted that people did this automatically.

“Most people become infected with the behavior of others without even realizing it. We have a need to follow the norms imposed by those around us and automatically correlate our actions with theirs. But smartphones can exacerbate social isolation. Even worse, people without telephones cannot even try to reproduce such behavior and feel even more lonely, ”the researchers said.