Why, after turning off all notifications, do we still have the habit of opening the app even though there's nothing new?

Have you ever noticed something like this: around you, and really yourself too, more and more colleagues and friends have completely turned off notifications from Facebook, Instagram, even noisy chat groups, but they still unconsciously reopen those same apps dozens of times a day, without any notifications coming in. I noticed this not through any research, but simply sitting next to a few friends, seeing their phones were completely silent, neither vibrating nor lighting up the screen, yet every few minutes they picked it up, swiped down, scrolled for a few seconds and then put it down. There is no reason to open it but it is still open as a habit. Sometimes I have free time, so I sit down and think, analyze and even ask AI, but in general, the initial reason why nearly all of us form the habit of constantly checking our phones is the fear of missing out, that is, fear of someone texting, fear of important notifications that we don't know about. But when that element, the specific notification, was turned off completely, checking behavior did not decrease. It remains the same frequency. So the root cause was never the fear of missing out but another reason.

The excuse disappeared but the action remained the same

Actually, I had the same problem. There was a period when I turned off most of the notifications on my phone because I thought it would be less distracting, but then I realized that my hand still automatically opened the app to check when I had free time, like waiting for the elevator, waiting for food, sitting in a meeting without having to talk. If you have also experienced this feeling, you are actually not alone, because this seems to be a fairly common phenomenon and not an isolated incident of a few people lacking willpower.

And when the reason is the fear of missing out is put aside, the habit still exists, perhaps it has separated into an independent reflex, a form of limb movement trained over thousands of repetitions, like the way a dog in Pavlov's classic experiment still salivated when hearing the bell, even though no food appeared afterward. The bell here is the feeling of picking up the phone, and the food, that is, the actual notification, has long disappeared, but the reflex is still intact.

Perhaps, uncertainty is the root cause

If you ask AI, there is another layer of information worth mentioning. The mechanism that makes checking the phone addictive does not necessarily lie in whether there is information or not, but in the uncertainty of the reward, that is, every time you open the app, you or your friends are not sure if there is anything new this time or not, and it is that uncertainty that stimulates the brain to want to try again. This is a familiar variable reward mechanism in behavioral psychology, and it explains quite well why turning off notifications, which only removes one channel, is not enough to break the habit, because the act of opening the app itself becomes a little game of uncertainty, separate from whether there is an actual message or not. So two issues combined: motor reflexes trained through repetition, and the uncertainty of rewards each time you open the app, are really the things worth paying attention to here, not the fear of missing out on information like the story you often hear. And if you've ever tried turning off notifications, deleting apps, or placing your phone out of reach to reduce dependence, and still find yourself mindlessly going back to checking, perhaps the problem isn't your lack of discipline or determination. The problem may be that the solution is targeting the wrong target, turning off notifications only addresses the initial excuse, not the reflex that has formed after years of repetition. This makes me wonder, if the technology industry really wants to help users become less dependent on their phones, perhaps the answer does not lie in adding another button to turn off notifications, but something that affects the reflex of picking up the phone, a much more difficult problem than adjusting a few settings in the settings section.