You’re attention is being hijacked by your phone – this may not be news to you, but a new study has quantified the attention-stealing effect of smartphone notifications.

A new report set to be published in June shows that your average smartphone notification affects your attention for around seven seconds each. This might not seem like a lot, but these can add up to hundreds of seconds a day for social media butterflies.

The study involved 180 university students being given a Stroop test – where they have to identify words spelling out colours but in a different coloured font – while being distracted by different fake smartphone notifications.

The students were split into three groups, ones which received generic notifications, one which had those that most closely mirrored phone notification, and a third with blurred notifications.

While all notifications affected attention for about seven seconds, the impact increased with notifications that mirrored those on a phone.

The research also found that while more personalised and relevant notifications took away more attention, general notifications also sparked physiological signs of arousal and impacted attention and cognitive processing.

One of the researchers found that personal phone usage patterns also affected the amount a notification impacted attention span, as well as the number of notifications coming up on a screen.

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These factors were found to be more impactful rather than total screen time, meaning that attention may be disrupted based on how someone uses a smartphone, rather than how much they use it.

Devices do have ways to mitigate their impact on attention, with different options for displaying notifications and do not disturb settings.

The research sheds new light on the way smartphones impact our cognition with quantifiable data, bringing new evidence to debates surrounding children’s use of smartphones and how it can effect their development.