# Do phone notifications hurt focus, even if I don't check them? > Yes. In a 2015 Florida State University experiment, simply receiving a notification hurt performance on an attention-demanding task about as much as calling or texting, even when people never touched the phone. In a field experiment with 221 adults (Kushlev et al., 2016), people reported more inattention in the week their alerts were on. - Page: https://tre-up.com/research/do-notifications-hurt-focus - Topic: [Interruptions and attention](https://tre-up.com/research/topics/interruptions-and-attention) - Published 2026-10-07 · Updated 2026-10-10 · 5 sources - Written by Pursue Lab, Tre-Up's research process (https://tre-up.com/research/method) - Cite as: Pursue Lab, Tre-Up (2026). Do phone notifications hurt focus, even if I don't check them? https://tre-up.com/research/do-notifications-hurt-focus ## The cost of a ping Researchers at Florida State University gave people a task that needed steady attention and let their phones receive notifications during it. Performance dropped when a notification arrived, even though nobody picked up the phone. The drop was about the same size as the one seen when people actually used the phone to call or text. The authors' explanation is that the notification starts a train of thought that has nothing to do with the task [1]. A field experiment points the same way over a longer stretch. For one week, 221 adults kept alerts on and their phone within reach; for another week, alerts off and the phone out of sight. With alerts on, they reported more inattention and hyperactivity, and more inattention went with lower productivity and well-being [2]. ## How many we receive In a one-week study of real phones, people dealt with about 63 notifications a day, mostly from messaging and email, and usually looked at them within minutes, silent mode or not [3]. That study is small and from 2014, so treat the number as a floor, not a fact about you. ## What the research doesn't say None of this means every notification is harmful or that switching all of them off is the answer. When people turned off every alert for a day, they felt less distracted but also more anxious about being unreachable [4]. A randomized field experiment found that batching notifications helped more than either a constant stream or none at all [5]. The lab effect was measured over minutes, and the field results are self-reports. They do not diagnose anything; the inattention measured in a general population is not a clinical condition. ## Something to try today Pick the next hour that matters and put the phone out of sight with alerts off, then check it once at the end. That is the condition that helped in the field experiment [2]. ## How Tre-Up approaches this Pursue treats its own signal as a cost: every alert it sends spends some of the attention it is trying to protect. So it is designed to stay quiet unless it has a good reason to speak, and to send one signal, not a stream. Tre-Up is an iOS app in development. Pursue is the AI inside it. This note describes research and design intent, not results from the app. Nothing here is medical advice. ## Sources Summaries are written in our own words from each source's abstract, public record or official text. Follow the link to read the original. 1. Stothart C, Mitchum A, Yehnert C (2015). The attentional cost of receiving a cell phone notification. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 41(4):893–897. https://doi.org/10.1037/xhp0000100 - Institutions: Florida State University (United States) - Our summary: https://tre-up.com/research/sources/stothart-2015-notification-cost 2. Kushlev K, Proulx JDE, Dunn EW (2016). "Silence Your Phones": Smartphone Notifications Increase Inattention and Hyperactivity Symptoms. Proceedings of CHI 2016, 1011–1020. https://doi.org/10.1145/2858036.2858359 - Institutions: University of Virginia (United States); University of British Columbia (Canada) - Our summary: https://tre-up.com/research/sources/kushlev-2016-silence-your-phones 3. Pielot M, Church K, de Oliveira R (2014). An in-situ study of mobile phone notifications. Proceedings of MobileHCI 2014. https://doi.org/10.1145/2628363.2628364 - Institutions: Telefónica Research (Spain) - Our summary: https://tre-up.com/research/sources/pielot-2014-in-situ-notifications 4. Pielot M, Rello L (2017). Productive, Anxious, Lonely: 24 Hours Without Push Notifications. Proceedings of MobileHCI 2017. https://doi.org/10.1145/3098279.3098526 - Institutions: Telefónica Research (Spain) - Our summary: https://tre-up.com/research/sources/pielot-rello-2017-24-hours 5. Fitz N, Kushlev K, Jagannathan R, Lewis T, Paliwal D, Ariely D (2019). Batching smartphone notifications can improve well-being. Computers in Human Behavior 101:84–94. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2019.07.016 - Institutions: Duke University (United States); Georgetown University (United States) - Our summary: https://tre-up.com/research/sources/fitz-2019-batching-notifications ## Related notes - [Should I turn off notifications completely, or batch them?](https://tre-up.com/research/should-i-turn-off-or-batch-notifications.md) - [Why is it so hard to get back to work after an interruption?](https://tre-up.com/research/why-is-it-hard-to-get-back-to-work-after-an-interruption.md) --- © 2026 Tre-Up. 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