Smartphones Tip the Balance

"New report: Smartphones increase workload and decrease productivity." This 2011 headline of a story from responsesource.com seems like quite the paradox. Smartphones aren't helping us and aren't making us smarter? You might not think it possible, but it very well could be.

A UK study suggests that the mere ownership of a BlackBerry or other smartphone does not decrease our workload, but actually increases our workload because we tend to check email more frequently, we're available all day every day, and our bosses know it, making us even more connected to our smartphones. However, Ian Price found that smartphones are not the answer to work/life balance.

Price conducted the study and wrote about the findings in his book The Activity Illusion. He found that smartphones do decrease anxiety about an influx of emails waiting to be read. However, this leads to a significant amount of time working during off-hours, taking time away from family, friends, and relaxing.

In the video below, Price succinctly states his interest in the psychology behind our new media and how social norms have not been developed for how to use the new technology.

Notice how he discussed social norms and the stigma surrounding people if they don't have others constantly in contact with them. In today's technology-ridden world, it's hard to unplug from devices. Unfortunately, men may be worse for wear when it comes to new media.

Studies show that career women are happier than career men. A 2011 CareerBliss of Irvine study of more than 200,000 company reviews, "reveals that overall, women outrank men in all factors of career happiness, specifically in areas concerning work-life balance, flexibility with their work schedule, career advancement and job security."



Divide App for Android

Some of the findings could be due in part to traditional families where the husband feels the duty to work harder or longer to provide more income. The difference in happiness could be related to technology use as well. Women tend to use technology to nurture relationships or to seek emotional bonds while men tend to use technology for informational purposes such as staying in touch with the office after hours. This could, in turn, lead to Price's argument regarding the social norms of using smartphones. But companies aren't focusing on the social norms but rather new interfaces for smartphones.



Enterproid, a start-up company in New York, is already dividing work from personal life with an app which will launch on the Android. The app creates two environments or profiles: one for your personal information and one for corporate information. Whichever profile is in use is protected from the rest of the phone. The hope is that you no longer have to worry about mixing personal and business life.

Of course, this doesn't solve the deeper problem of when technology is in use and for what purpose. Simply because you can separate personal and corporate information on your phone doesn't mean that you can separate the physical realities of work and life.