Whether you’re on the train, in the club or at the football game, there’s a new trend for the mobile phone that’s on the rise.
A growing trend of people is to carry not one, but two mobile phones at their disposal.
These ‘dual users’ (DSUs) constantly switch between the two – or use both at the same time, one in each hand.
While it helps to separate work and pleasure, carrying two phones can reveal a lot about your personality, according to psychologists.
David Sheffield, a professor of psychology at the University of Derby, thinks that having two phones can be linked to anxiety or neuroticism.
‘If you have an addiction problem you may be using your phone a lot and you may be more concerned about battery life, so two phones offer protection,’ he told MailOnline.
Middle Brit they spend four hours and 20 minutes on their smartphone a day or about a quarter of our waking life, a recent study has revealed.
But if having two options we spend more time looking at the smartphone is still unknown.
Carrying two phones – a very common habit – can reveal a lot about your personality, according to psychologists (file photo)
Brits on average spend more than four hours a day on a smartphone, but this number could be much higher due to the widespread habit.
Dr Zaheer Hussain, senior lecturer in psychology at Nottingham Trent University, said two phones could also be a sign of ‘FOMO’, fear of missing out.
FOMO – the belief that others are having fun without us – has been linked to increased use of mobile phones, as has the number of apps used.
And the storage requirements of all these apps can mean people have to spread them across two phones.
“People don’t want to miss out on news and information,” Dr Hussain told MailOnline.
“Also, there are things that are always offered by social media, sometimes people wander unwisely from the habit of learning.”
Carrying two phones is often the only way to separate work-related and personal messages during the week.
This approach can make it easier to ‘leave’ work in the evening and help keep work and life separate.
For example, employees can turn off their work phone while continuing to scroll through their favorite apps and chat with colleagues before going to bed.
FoMO, a term that was introduced in 2004, includes two processes – first, the feeling of missing good experiences, followed by a behavior that is forced to maintain these relationships, such as using a smartphone (file photo)
“Companies may have the opportunity to provide mobile phones to their employees,” said Dr Kostadin Kushlev from Georgetown University’s psychology department.
However, Maxi Heitmayer, a human-computer interaction researcher at the London School of Economics, points out that there may be other problems.
“Most people seem to expect to be available all the time, professionally and privately,” he told MailOnline.
‘This then leads to a tragic situation where there are two devices that pull and compete for success.’
For some DSUs, two phones may back up if one runs out of battery, but this may be a sign of ‘difficult’ smartphone usage.
Overall, why people use two smartphones – and how this may affect smartphone addiction – is not a ‘frequently researched question’, Professor Sheffield added.
Social media apps like WhatsApp and Instagram allow multiple devices to log into the same account, which can increase dual-phone experience.
Social media apps such as WhatsApp (pictured) and Instagram allow multiple devices to log into the same account, which can help with dual phone use.
Some DSUs may simply want to have the capabilities of different types of phones available to them all at the same time, whether it’s an iPhone, Google Pixel or Samsung Flip.
However, Dr Mark Griffiths, a distinguished professor of behavioral psychology at Nottingham Trent University, said having two mobile phones was ‘not a big deal’.
“People are no more addicted to mobile phones than alcoholics are to bottles,” Dr Griffiths told MailOnline.
‘It’s what people do on their phones that can be addictive, not just the smartphone.’
