The effect of Smartphones on Work-Life Balance

Lisa Donnelly
Griffith College Dublin

Abstract
Smartphone usage amongst the general public has risen dramatically only in the
last 2 to 5 years. With the introduction of the smartphone users have found many
benefits, such as access to apps for news, public service information,
entertainment as well as constant access to their email, social networking sites
and the internet. This paper aims to examine the effect this has had on working
people and their ability to maintain a healthy work life balance.
The paper presents a brief history of the development of the smartphone and its
subsequent integration into the every day life of workers. It also presents some
theories on what constitutes a healthy work life balance alongside some research
into existing literature to determine whether people feel their smartphones have
enhanced or presented challenges in their ability to achieve this.
The paper asserts that the smartphone has afforded both individuals and
organisations great opportunities to improve performance and service in their
workplace environments. However, both organisations and some individuals
have yet to establish acceptable boundaries in relation to the use of smartphones
for work based activities outside of legal working hours.

Introduction
The definition of what constitutes a smartphone is not clearly defined, however,
it is commonly understood to be a mobile phone which includes advanced
functionality beyond the traditional mobile phone features of providing the
ability to make phone calls and send SMS messages. The majority of smartphones
provide additional functionality such as cameras, the ability to view and store
photos, store and play music via an integrated music player, access the internet,
access email as well as a range of other applications which are developed
specifically for smartphones
(http://www.techterms.com/definition/smartphone).

While the word Smartphone for most consumers is synonymous with Apples
iPhone and Android devices from other providers which were released to
mainstream consumers in 2007, the development of what we have come to know
as the Smartphone actually began in the early 1990’s. The literature review
presents an overview of the development of the Smartphone. It also examines
the effects the introduction is perceived to have had on users.

There are an abundance of media articles which focus on the effect increased use
of the internet and now the introduction of smartphones is having on the work-
life balance of employees in the information society. Academic research is also
beginning to emerge in this area. The literature review presents some detail on
what some researchers believe constitutes a healthy work-life balance.

The smartphone is a relatively new addition to the life of most people having
only become widely available to the general consumer in the last five years. This
makes it difficult to ascertain exactly effect this will have on people and society in
general. The literature review presents an overview of some of the initial effects
noted by the media and academics. It also examines how smartphones have
impacted the work-life balance.

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Literature Review
The rise of the Smartphone
While the average consumer has only become familiar with the smartphone in
the last 5 years, development of what we know as the smartphone today actually
began in the early 1990s.

The diagram below shows the key development timelines for the smartphone
(derived from information on www.smartphoneguide.com).

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In the early days of the smartphone (from 1992 to 2002) the prohibitive pricing
and overall marketing strategy meant smartphones were generally only used by
business users. Most of the smartphone models during this period focussed on
providing core business functionality which essentially combined the mobile
phone with a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant).

The release of Nokias N-Series phones marked the beginning of phones being
marketed as mobile PCs. This range of phones introduced enhanced functionality
such as an MP3 player and camera. This could be seen as the initial stages of
phone providers moving the smartphone concept from the business market to
the consumer market.

White (2010) highlights a number of key technological advances that have

assisted technology and telecommunications companies in brining smartphones
to the general consumer. These include:

• Dramatic improvements in network bandwidth.

• Increased availability of wireless broadband.

• Increased size of memory cards for mobile phones.

• Technological improvements in screen design which enhance the quality

of images.

• Improvements in battery life.

• The introduction of mobile search which leverages the ‘location

awareness’ of the mobile phone.

All of the elements identified by White (2010) contributed to the 2007 release of
the iPhone. The loyalty of consumers to the Apple brand built on the success of
the iPod music player, as well as Apples traditional focus on the consumer
market as opposed to the business market resulted in the iPhone becoming a
huge success. Apple also leveraged the power of Web 2.0 which allowed
developers to create apps which would run on the iPhone. This helped to further
entice consumers to move to the iPhone as they would be able to use their phone
for much more than just calls, texts, camera etc.

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The release of the Android operating system in 2007 meant that other phone
providers were able to move into the consumer smartphone market and attempt
to emulate the success of Apple. Since then other providers such as Nokia,
Samsung and HTC have gained a huge market share of the consumer smartphone
market.

Nielsen (2011), an organisation who is involved in measuring consumer usage

statistics presented the following results of smartphone U.S. market share in
March 2011

Nielsen (2010)
The Nielsen statistics report that Apple has now surpassed Blackberry in terms
of smartphone sales which indicate they are now also taking a share of the
business market, while Android sales have increased dramatically to overtake
Apple. MobiThinking (2011) further substantiate these statistics and expand
upon these to indicate that the mobile phone market is continuing to grow and
smartphones are quickly gaining more of this overall share. There is no way of
knowing which provider will be the most successful, however, one thin seems
clear, the smartphone is here to stay.

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What is a healthy Work-Life balance?

Work-life balance as defined by the National Flexi-work partnership is the

“balance between an individuals work and their life outside work” which “should
be healthy, that personal fulfilment is important inside work and that satisfaction
outside work may enhance employees’ contribution to work” (National Flexi-
work Partnership - Work-life balance project (2005)).

Another study endorsed by the New Zealand Department of Labour further

defines the work life-balance as the ability to find a balance between three key
elements: paid work, unpaid work and personal time. In this study the subjects
interviewed identified three elements which they considered contributed to
work-life balance. These were defined by the interview subjects as follow:

Paid time - this was seen as the time people were paid to carry out work related
duties.
Unpaid time - this was seen to be the time people took to carry out personal
obligations and home based activities.
Personal time - this was seen to consist of a number of different elements,
including “Me time, Time to reflect/reenergise, spiritual needs, family time,
partner time, social time and physical health.”
(Perceptions and Attitudes Towards Work-Life Balance in New Zealand (2003)).
The detail above suggests that some boundary between an employees work and
personal life needs to exist in order for them to maintain a healthy work life
balance. It also suggests that people must have time to allocate to a number of
different aspects of personal time in order to maintain a healthy balance.

A short questionnaire was distributed to 20 employees in cross functional teams

within a software development company to try and determine if they felt
ownership of a smartphone affected any of the elements above. Results of this
questionnaire are presented in the appendix. The results of the survey are
evaluated in the discussion section below.

The effect of Smartphones on users

Smartphones have changed almost beyond recognition in recent years. As

discussed in the section on the history of smartphone, the introduction of the
iPhone and their competitor Android phones has meant these devices are no

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longer only available to business users of certain positions within the modern
day organisation. They are now widely available to everyday consumers and
offer apps for almost every conceivable task. They also mean that users are now
constantly plugged-in to the web at all times bringing the world closer to a truly
networked society.

This has undoubtedly been of benefit to people as the Web 2.0 model has
enabled software providers to create apps which deliver specific information via
apps that users would previously have had to search explicitly for on the
internet. This is helping to further develop the information society and make
workers more efficient in carrying out everyday tasks.

However, with all new technology that offers benefits to users there are
disadvantages. The media has taken a keen interest in discussing the negative
effect smartphones are having on users. There are also a number of academic
papers focussing on the effect smartphones have had on workers.

A common theme of many of the media and academic reports are that
smartphones are habit forming and that they are resulting in work invading what
was traditionally considered personal/free time of the user.

An academic study conducted by Oulasvirta, A., Rattenbury, T., Ma, L., Raita, E.
(2010), presented results that smartphones are habit forming. Their study found
that people who owned a smartphone developed ‘check habits’ which saw users
ritually unlock and check one or more applications such as email or social
networking on their phone. Users who participated in the study cited this habit
as an annoyance and one which increased in frequency over time. While the
study does not aim to study the potential for smartphone usage to develop into
addiction it does cite references to the potential for smartphone check habits to
develop into addiction. The concept of people becoming addicted to their
smartphones is one that probably warrants further study as usage of the devices
becomes more widespread.

The New York Times (2010) ran a series of articles focussing on the effects of
smartphone usage on users. Connellys (2010) article reports that users of
smartphones find they affect their concentration and stress levels and can

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intrude on other activities. Scelfos (2010) article reports, possibly more
worryingly that parents who use smartphones are not engaging in enough
quality time with their children as their focus is on their devices instead. The
Editors (2010) of the New York Times also ran a blog series which received
contributions from a number of leading industry experts. Many of these suggest
that smartphones have resulted in users never ceasing to multi-task. It was
suggested that this has the potential to increase the stress levels of users and
many offered advice on how to overcome this.

Are Smartphones affecting Work-Life balance?

Some of the literature on this subject suggests that smartphones are affecting the
work-life balance of users. The common thread is that because smartphones now
provide the ability for users to be connected to work email etc. 24/7 that it is
removing the boundary between work time and personal time, therefore
disrupting the work-life balance.

Meece (2010) contributed an article to the New York Time series titled ‘Who’s
the boss? You or your gadget?’. This article provided some interesting
contributions from users themselves. A number of users suggested that the
ability to access work communications via their smartphone enabled them to
meet their work obligations while at the same time meeting family obligations.
Prior to the introduction of smartphones these workers may have had to forgo
the family activities in order to meet these work obligations. The devices also
enabled them to have more meaningful contact with their families when they
were involved in work activities. Apps like Skype and Facetime enable more face
to face communication when families are apart due to work commitments.

The article does provide evidence that users themselves are becoming aware of
problems associated with overuse of smartphones and other devices. Some users
cited examples of how they were consciously disengaging from their devices at
set times such as family meal times.

Waligum (2010) suggests that workers are driving the situation as much as the
organisations they work for. Employees themselves want to own a smartphone
which is driven by consumer behaviour worldwide and the desire to have the

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best gadget. Most organisations willingly provide access to their corporate
networks including email, intranet etc. allowing employees to access these via
their personal devices. While this may have been initially to support tele-
workers in their organisations it is possible to now extend this to everyone who
owns a smartphone. This results in employees who do not have a traditional tele-
working arrangement in place with their employer inevitably spending part of
their free time outside of the office on work activities such as email.

Agger (2011) introduces the concept of iTime as a direct result of

smartphones.He is of the opinion that smartphones challenge the traditional
boundaries between paid time and personal time identified as two of the key
elements of a healthy work-life balance. He asserts that due to the constant
connectivity to the office provided by smartphones that people no longer have an
opportunity to be dis-connected from their work life or responsibilities.

The elements of personal time which subjects of the New Zealand Department of
Labour (2003) study identified as important for a healthy work life balance
included “Me time, Time to reflect/reenergise, spiritual needs, family time,
partner time, social time and physical health”. The New York Times series cited
examples of how smartphones can help people address some of these needs,
such as family time via Facetime and skype calls when employees are away from
their families, social time via social networking etc. However, it may be more
difficult to meet some of the other needs identified such as spiritual,
reflection/reenergising time, me time and physical health while constantly
connected to the distractions which the smartphone introduces.

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Discussion
The effect of smartphones on society
The two opposing viewpoints of technological determinism and social shaping of
technology both have relevance to some extent in evaluating the effect the
smartphone has had on society. Technological determinists such as Marshall
McLuhan and Neil Postman are of the view that any new technology changes the
behaviour of society.

The rapid development and user adoption of the smartphone has led to
significant changes in peoples behaviour in relation to work related tasks in the
information society. It has also led to an entirely new set of behaviour as people
now use their smartphones to access a host of information not previously
available to them when they were mobile. Technological determinists would be
of the view that the technology i.e. the smartphone itself has resulted in this
change. The following example cited by McLuhan, M. (2001 pp 8 - 9) illustrates
the viewpoint taken by technological determinists:

“Let us return to the electric light. Whether the light is being used for brain surgery
or night baseball is a matter of indifference. It could be argued that these activities
are in some way the ‘content’ of the electric light since they could not exist without
the electric light. This fact merely underlines the fact that ‘the medium is the
message’ because it is the medium that shapes and controls the scale and form of
human association and action.”

Here McLuhan is saying that the medium itself is what shapes society and the
evolution of how people in that society behave. I don’t think this is true for the
smartphone. Oulasvirta, A., Rattenbury, T., Ma, L., Raita, E. (2010) observe in
their study that users use of their phone becomes more frequent as they uncover
more meaningful content. They also observed that the longer a user owns the
phone the more content they discover and therefore this increases their
interaction times. This would seem to contradict the view that the medium itself
is what changes behaviour rather than content. While it is true users would not
be able to access this information on the move without the smartphone equally
they wouldn’t continue to and their behaviour would be unlikely to continue to

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change if the content did not engage them. I therefore don’t feel that this aspect
of the technological determinist viewpoint is true for the smartphone.

While to a certain extent the functionality offered by this new technology has
influenced the way employees live their lives I don’t believe the smartphone on
its own would not have been able to effect change on society that has been
witnessed in recent years. Government investment in wireless broadband
infrastructure has also been crucial. The improved quality and availability of
wireless connectivity has also been instrumental in increased user adoption.

In Ireland, political influence to change the regulations surrounding mobile

operator licences has resulted in the mobile phone market in Ireland becoming
more competitive to the benefit of consumers. While mobile phone access in
Ireland is still considered expensive by European standards, without the
introduction of competitors to the market there is a chance that the price of
smartphones may have remained too prohibitive to the average user in this
country.

It could also be said that the current economic climate has instilled a
nervousness in employees that has resulted in them committing more time to
work related tasks outside traditional working hours in order to secure their
jobs. This is also evident in some of the quotes provided by users in Meeces
(2010) article, for example “The decision to plug in or unplug is a personal one. My
job is fast-paced and demanding. If I’m not paying attention during the off-hours,
things could go south.” I feel that these auxiliary political and economic factors
have also contributed to the rise in smartphone usage for the purposes of
carrying out work related tasks outside traditional work hours.

One of Neil Postmans most famous assertions was that most technology is
affected by a kind of Frankenstein syndrome in which technology is generally
developed for a specific purpose “But once the machine is built, we discover—
sometimes to our horror, usually to our discomfort, always to our surprise—that
it has ideas of its own" (Postman 1982, p.23). This would appear to be partly true
of the effect that the smartphone has had on workers in the information society.
The technology has been developed for consumers of all kinds and provides
access to a high volume of entertainment and media related content. However, as

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the studies by Oulasvirta, A., Rattenbury, T., Ma, L., Raita, E. (2010) show, the
majority of workers involved in their study developed checking habits primarily
related to checking work based email.

The effect of smartphones on the world of work

The introduction of the smartphone has further developed the Information
Society by providing the ability for employees to be attached to their employer
network 24/7. It could be said that this has resulted in paid time essentially
increasing outside of contractual hours and encroaching on some of the activities
normally associated with unpaid time and personal time. This has changed the
workplace and has made working on different teams in different time zones
easier to manage. Conversely, this has resulted in the erosion of the boundary
between work and personal time.

It could also be said that the introduction of this technology has changed the way
people live their lives. The activities they carry out every day even in their
personal time is now heavily influenced by how they work. The technology of the
smartphone has afforded people the ability to be responsive to work related
tasks 24/7 and these responses are now fitted in around other personal time
activities. The New York Time (2010) series of articles demonstrates this change
with a number of articles.

The question of whether the way we work is changing the way we live or if the
way we live is changing the way we work is really dependent on the individual.
For those who love being immersed in technology 24/7 it is just an extension of
that characteristic to also extend that to their working habits. However, for those
who are less comfortable with technology, they may feel overwhelmed with the
intrusion of work email on their smartphones and find it more difficult to impose
appropriate boundaries to their use. This is evident on some of the user
comments on the New York Times (2010) series of articles.

Conclusions
The smartphone has undoubtedly revolutionised how people communicate for
work and how they access information related to work and personal interests. It

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has also created employment as developers seek to capitalise on the market
available for development of apps and other content for smartphone devices.

As Postman (1995) discusses in a 1995 interview that all new technology is like a
“Faustian bargain in that it gives us something important but we also lose
something important in the process”. This would appear to be true of the
smartphone. The benefits of the smartphone have been discussed throughout
this paper as have the negatives. They provide users with the ability to stay on
top of work outside of the office and employers in theory benefit from increased
productivity, often at little expense to themselves as users are choosing to
purchase the phones themselves. The principle losses would be in terms of loss
of personal time and the erosion of boundaries between work and personal time.

I feel that it is really a personal choice that all owners of this technology need to
make in relation to usage patterns of the devices for work related activities.
Some users are happy to be connected all the time and see no issue with it.
However, others cite that it results in increased stress, while others particularly
those who have been using the devices longer state that they have consciously
imposed boundaries in relation to their smartphone use.

Much of the academic literature in this area has focussed on managerial level
users of smartphones. I feel that studies should possibly be conducted into the
usage patterns of non-executive level personnel also in order to help establish
appropriate HR and contractual guidelines for personal smartphone usage on
company networks outside office hours.

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