No. 87Psychology3 minviews 32
Published by GK Library Annex
You thought your phone buzzed, but there is no notification
You definitely felt a vibration, yet there are no alerts. Where did it come from?
If you take out your phone thinking it vibrated and find no notification, the sensation was probably an illusion created by your brain. Often called a ‘phantom vibration,’ it happens to more people than you might expect.
Your brain makes a guess
If you keep your phone on vibrate and always carry it in the same pocket, your brain gets used to reading small vibrations there as notifications. It may then interpret ordinary sensations, such as clothing brushing against you or a slight muscle twitch, as a phone vibration.
The same reasoning helps explain why it happens more often when you are waiting for a message. The stronger your feeling that you must not miss it, the more readily your brain labels an ambiguous signal as a notification.
How common is it?
In a 2010 survey at one US academic hospital, 115 of the 169 medical staff who answered—about 68%—said they had experienced this. Thirteen percent said they felt it daily, and most first noticed it between one month and one year after they started carrying the device.
It isn't just adults, either. In a study published in PLOS ONE in 2019, 58.9% of 2,959 students aged 10 to 14 said they had felt a phone ring or vibrate when it hadn't.
Who feels it more often?
The 2010 survey also found some patterns. Residents early in their careers reported it more than attending physicians, as did people who carried the device in a breast pocket rather than on a belt, people who carried it for more hours a day, and people who used vibrate mode more often.
It's easy to assume the phone is faulty and buzzing on its own, but if the notification history is empty, it makes more sense to suspect your own senses. Feeling it often does not mean something is wrong with your body, either. It's more like a sign of spending a lot of time with a phone close to you.
If you want to cut down on it
In the same survey, 39% of those who had phantom vibrations were able to stop them. It worked for 75% of those who turned off vibrate mode, 63% of those who moved their phone to a different spot, and 50% of those who switched to another device. The differences between methods were not statistically clear, though, and 39% of those affected had not tried anything.
Try turning off vibration for apps that aren't urgent and keeping it only for contacts you really need to catch, or carry your phone in a bag instead of your usual pocket. If you use a smartwatch, letting only your wrist alert you is another option.
Related reads
A vibration without an alert is often a guess made by a brain waiting for the phone. Turning off vibration or moving the phone to another place may reduce it.
Notes and references · Rothberg et al., BMJ 2010 · Pisano et al., PLOS ONE 2019. The rates, risk factors, and success rates of each method come from a survey of medical staff at one US academic hospital (169 respondents), so they cannot readily be applied to everyone; the student figure follows Pisano et al. (2019). Explanations of the cause are still hypotheses.
Editorial standardsReport an error
Quick quiz