| Abstract [eng] |
Social Media (SM) – way of communicating with each other, sharing ideas, attitude towards the environment around us. They have created a large community, made up of more than 50 percent of the world's population. An integral part of SM are notifications that keep us informed of new events. However, over time, it has been observed that the number of these notifications increases, becomes too frequent, causes stress and interferes with the work being done at that time. However, data on the effects of SM sounds on human physiology and cognition are scarce. Therefore, the aim of this work was to evaluate human physiological reactions to the sounds of notifications sent by social media and smart devices. The study included 41 participants (26.7±10.3 years, 15 males and 26 females). During the experiment, subjects were asked to complete questionnaires about smart devices and SM usage habits. Heart rate (HR), heart rate variability (HRV: RMSSD and HF parameters) and electrical conductivity of the skin (SC) were recorded in four conditions for 5 minutes each. The initial state – silence was followed by social media or unpleasant sound with a neutral sound in between. There was a 2-minutes break between stimuli set. The results revealed that men had lower heart rate variability compared to women, but heart rate and electrical conductivity of the skin did not differ between the sexes. Assessing the physiological reaction to neutral, unpleasant and social media sounds, it turned out that: the heart rate was highest in silence, while listening to sounds decreased and did not depend on the category of sounds; heart rate variability was highest in men when listening to social media sounds, while women were the highest when listening to neutral sounds; electrical conductivity of the skin was great when listening to unpleasant sounds, regardless of gender. Assessing the relationship between physiological responses to neutral, unpleasant and social media sounds and social media consumption habits, it was found that: in subjects who choose to turn off mobile phone sounds less frequently, heart rate decreased significantly during audible conditions compared to measurements in silence; for subjects who usually turn off social media sounds, RMSSD is higher in the condition of unpleasant sounds compared to the condition of social media sounds; in subjects who reported being addicted to social media, electrical conductivity of the skin was higher than that of subjects who reported being partially dependent or independent of social media. The subjective assessment of the emotional state (arousal and valence) before and after each set of sounds did not affect the development of physiological parameters when listening to different sounds. |
