Psychologist reveals the secret details hidden in your iPhone app icons

With their abundance of colorful, eye-catching apps, it’s no surprise that we spend a quarter of our waking lives on our smartphones.

But you may not have noticed that these little icons – attractively arranged in grid-like stacks on our screens – are constantly competing for taps.

In fact, popular apps, from WhatsApp to X, Instagram and Spotify, are purposefully designed to draw our fingers towards them, psychologists reveal.

WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger, for example, are made to look like buttons, and research shows that we like to press buttons from an early age.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s X, which got a new name and logo last year, has a big X marking the spot, like a helicopter landing pad at our fingertip.

Meanwhile, Spotify has the look of a fingerprint reader and YouTube has a play icon right in the middle – both locks tap out instinctively.

Dr. Anastasia Dedyukhina, a digital wellness expert and director of the Conscious Digital InstituteThese attractive, attractive icons make us “more likely to tap and use the app.”

“Generally speaking, shapes like circles, rounded edges or hatches make app icons feel like buttons, making people want to press them,” she told MailOnline.

“Facebook’s rounded ‘F’ in a square looks like a button, making you want to tap it, while Amazon’s smiley arrow feels friendly and looks like a package handle, matching the delivery theme.

“On Instagram, the camera icon reminds people of old Polaroid cameras, which feels nostalgic, and the bright colors make it look fun and exciting.”

Many app icons have circles, like Messenger, WhatsApp and Spotify, tapping into an innate desire since childhood to touch places, but others also have non-circular patterns.

After Elon Musk bought Twitter, he renamed it and changed the app’s logo from a bird to an X, which may have been part of an internal strategy to pull our fingers.

Dr. Daria J Kuss, professor of psychology at Nottingham Trent University, said many apps like X use “simple and recognizable symbols and icons that are familiar to us.”

“Smartphone apps are designed to attract attention and stand out, so users engage with them,” she told MailOnline.

Dr. Jay Olson, a postdoctoral researcher at the department of psychology at McGill University in Canada, said that changing app icons “can definitely influence behavior.”

“Some companies run A/B tests on different app icons,” he told MailOnline.

“For example, they can test two different designs of an icon in the App Store and then keep the design that drives the most downloads.”

WhatsApp is a good example of a very clickable app, as the circular voice button in the center resembles a button.

Research shows that from an early age we like to press buttons, even when we know we are not supposed to.

Professor Rachel Plotnick, a cultural theorist at Indiana University Bloomington, thinks buttons “encourage consumerism” and are ubiquitous from an early age.

She pointed to Amazon Dash, a discontinued gadget that allowed users to reorder their favorite items, from Heineken beer to Tide washing powder, at the touch of a button.

“Social media is generally designed around a ‘button tying’ mentality,” Professor Plotnick – author of ‘Power Button: A History of Pleasure, Panic and the Politics of Pushing’ – told MailOnline.

‘We tap buttons to order products and ask for a ride, we press buttons to express our feelings (via emojis, thumbs, etc.) about messages and shared content and we click buttons to fill out forms fill, apply and communicate.

‘Historically, pushing buttons has long been associated with pleasure, instant gratification and quick communication.

‘Anything that can be done with “just the push of a button” is seen as easy, automatic and desirable.

“I bet social media companies like Facebook, WhatsApp, Spotify and YouTube are all tapping into this cultural fascination with buttons and our desire to press them.

“But this may make it much harder to stop using these platforms, even when we feel like we need a break.”

Research last month found that the average Brit spends four hours and 20 minutes on their phone a day – around a quarter of our waking lives.

In total, women spend four hours and 36 minutes online per day, while men spend four hours and three minutes online per day, the Ofcom report found.

Meanwhile, a 2022 study in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health linked compulsive smartphone use to “burnout.”

Burnout is defined as a state of physical, mental and emotional exhaustion that can occur when you experience prolonged stress and feel under constant pressure.

TV presenter Carol Vorderman recently said she turns off her smartphone twelve hours a day to avoid ‘burnout’ after a health crisis.