Whether you’re on a train, in a club or at a football match, there’s a new smartphone habit that’s becoming increasingly common.
A growing trend of people are carrying not one, but two smartphones with them.
These ‘dual-smartphone users’ (DSUs) constantly switch between the two – or even use both at the same time, one in each hand.
Although it helps separate work from pleasure, carrying two phones can reveal a lot about your personality, according to psychologists.
David Sheffield, professor of psychology at the University of Derby, thinks having two phones may be linked with anxiety or even neuroticism.
‘If you are more neurotic you might be using your phone more and may be more concerned about battery life, so two phones provides a safety net,’ he told MailOnline.
The average Brit spends four hours and 20 minutes on a smartphone per day or around a quarter of our waking lives, recent research revealed.
But whether having two means we spend more time overall looking at a smartphone is as yet unclear.
Carrying two phones – an increasingly common behaviour – could reveal a lot about your personality, according to psychologists (file photo)
Brits on average spend over four hours per day on a smartphone, but this figure may be so high because of an increasingly common habit
Dr Zaheer Hussain, senior lecturer in psychology at Nottingham Trent University, said two phones could also be a sign of ‘FOMO’, the fear of missing out.
FOMO – the belief that others are having fun without us – has been linked with more intensive smartphone use, such as higher number of apps used.
And the storage demand of all these apps might mean people have to spread them across two phones.
‘People do not want to miss out news and notifications,’ Dr Hussain told MailOnline.
‘Also, there is constant content being provided by social media, sometimes people will mindlessly scroll content out of a learned habit.’
Carrying two phones is often just a way to separate work-based communications from personal ones during the week.
This tactic may make it easier to ‘switch off’ from professional obligations in the evening and help keep work and life separate.
For example, employees can switch off their work phone while continuing to scroll their favourite apps and keep up with friends before bed.
FoMO, a term introduced in 2004, includes two processes – firstly, a perception of missing out on a positive experience, followed up with a compulsive behaviour to maintain these social connections, such as using our smartphone (file photo)
‘Companies might be increasingly likely to provide phones for their workers,’ said Dr Kostadin Kushlev at Georgetown University’s department of psychology.
However, Maxi Heitmayer, a researcher of human-computer interactions at the London School of Economics, suggests there could be a drawback to this.
‘Many people seem to feel an expectation of being reachable all the time, both professionally and privately,’ he told MailOnline.
‘This then leads to the unfortunate scenario where there’s two devices that draw in and compete for attention.’
For other DSUs, two phones may offer a back-up in case one runs out of battery, but this could be a symptom of ‘problematic’ smartphone addiction.
Overall, why people use two smartphones – and how this might be related to smartphone addiction – are not ‘frequently researched questions’, Professor Sheffield added.
Social apps such as WhatsApp and Instagram allow multiple devices to be logged in to the same account, which may be increasing the dual phone phenomenon.
Social apps such as WhatsApp (pictured) and Instagram allow multiple devices to be logged in to the same account, which may help the dual phone phenomenon
Other DSUs might just want to have the various capabilities of different smartphone models available to them all at once, whether an iPhone, a Google Pixel or a Samsung Flip.
However, Dr Mark Griffiths, distinguished professor of behavioural addiction at Nottingham Trent University, said having two smartphones ‘is not a worry’.
‘People are no more addicted to smartphones than alcoholics are addicted to bottles,’ Dr Griffiths told MailOnline.
‘It’s what people do on their smartphones that can be addictive, not the smartphone itself.’
