It’s a push-button world!

We spend a quarter of our waking time on our smartphone. Colourful, eye-catching Apps, are constantly competing for taps. Popular Apps like Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, X, Messenger, Spotify and more… have deliberately designed their logos to attract our attention to them.

Research shows that from childhood, we love pressing buttons. Which is why WhatsAppInstagram and Messenger are made to look like buttons. X, has a big X marking the spot, like a treasure map, unconsciously reminding us of buried treasure… after all, ‘X marks the spot!’ The fact is, attractive icons make us more likely to use the App, as do shapes like circles, rounded edges, or shading, making App icons feel like buttons, which makes people want to press them.

Spotify looks like a fingerprint reader and YouTube h as a PLAY icon in the middle and both instinctively attract taps. Facebook’s rounded ‘f’ in a square looks like a button, making you unconsciously want to tap it, while Amazon’s smiley arrow suggests a friendly delivery service. Instagram has a camera icon which reminds people of the nostalgia of old style Polaroid cameras. The bright colours make it look fun and exciting. MessengerWhatsApp and Spotify feature circles which taps into an innate childhood desire to touch spots. Elon Musk renamed Twitter, changing the logo from a bird to an X, possibly a strategy to draw our fingers.

At Nottingham Trent University, Psychology Professor Dr Daria J Kuss said that many apps such as X use simple and recognisable symbols and icons which are familiar to us. Phone Apps are designed in a way that grabs attention and stands out to ensure users engage with it. Dr Jay Olson — postdoctoral scholar at McGill University’s Department of Psychology in Canada, said changing App icons ‘can definitely influence behaviour. Some companies do A/B testing of different App icons.’

So why is it we like pushing buttons? Research suggests we like pushing buttons from childhood, even when we know we’re not supposed to. In the late 1800s, it was found children would push buttons like honking horns and ringing doorbells — especially when their parents didn’t want them to.

It’s thought pleasurable tactile sensations are gained from the touch of a button. By pressing them repeatedly in our daily lives, we’ve been conditioned to expect buttons to give is what we want, and this may explain why we get so frustrated when buttons don’t work. For example, they may test two different designs of an icon in the App Store and then keep whichever one leads to the most downloads.

WhatsApp is a good example of a highly clickable app because the circular speech button in the centre has been made to look like a button.

Professor Rachel Plotnick, a cultural theorist at Indiana University Bloomington, and author of ‘Power Button: A History of Pleasure, Panic and the Politics of Pushing‘ believes that buttons ‘encourage consumerism’ and become ubiquitous from an early age. Users can re- order their favourite items with the push of a button. In this new age of push-button instant gratification, all we have to do is tap a button to call a taxi or an Uber, express feelings with emojis, apply for a jobs and communicate. Organising our lives with just the push of a button is easy!

Social media companies like Facebook, WhatsApp, Spotify, and YouTube are all exploiting this cultural fascination with buttons and our desire to push them may make it a lot more difficult to stop. Research carried out in 2024 by Ofcom revealed that the average

Briton spends 4hours 20minutes on their phones every day. Women spend 4hours 36minutes online per day and men 4hours 3minutes.

Meanwhile, a 2022 study reported in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health linked compulsive use of a smartphone with burnout. Burnout is defined as a state of physical, mental and emotional exhaustion that can occur when people experience long-term stress and constant pressure. Certainly incidences of burnout are increasing.

Knowledge of these facts might help those whose lives are ruled by this extreme access to technology. One thing is certain… it’s drastically changed life on planet earth, and not necessarily for the better. Instant gratification is becoming a human right, but not for the 14 year-old children in Nigeria who toil for 14 hours a day for a wage of $1.40 cents per day digging up the lithium and coltan that underpins it all.