When you catch yourself scrolling, have you ever stopped to wonder what it is that you’re drawn to? Perhaps there are flashing notifications demanding your attention. Bright colours, badges, videos and games, all calling to you in high definition from the palm of your hand. But what would happen if you couldn’t see the pink of the lipstick in the influencer’s latest make-up tutorial, the blue of the sea in your best friend’s holiday photos or the red of the heart-shaped emojis? If your phone was in black and white, would you be less attracted to it?
What is greyscale?
Most phones have an option on their settings which allows you to switch to greyscale or turn off the colour filters, which means that all you can see is black, white and shades of grey. Suddenly everything looks like an old print newspaper or a black-and-white movie. But what’s even more interesting is that it can change the way your brain reacts to your phone – giving you more power over whether you choose to open certain apps or messages, rather than just doing it automatically because a notification flashes up.
Understanding the appeal of colour
The human brain loves colour, and it’s often what you notice first. Think of traffic lights, with red for ‘stop’ and green for ‘go’. In nature red means danger, and we refer to the Earth as the Blue Planet because more than 70% of its surface is water. Colours give us so much information about the world around us – but they can also be used to hold your attention, and the engineers behind smartphones and apps known this.
Reducing temptation
As an experiment, you could try flipping your phone into greyscale mode and noticing how it makes you feel. Are the gaming apps as enticing? Do you feel as excited by messenger or chat notifications? And are you spending as much time doomscrolling? The function of your phone hasn’t changed – nothing is blocked or forbidden. You can still send messages, play games on it, make videos and buy things. But in greyscale, with the bright colours changed to shades of black and white, your phone might be holding your attention a little less, which means you will have more agency in deciding when and where you want to pick it up.
A calmer screen for a calmer you
Using greyscale might mean you check your phone less often, or spend less time on apps that you don’t really love. And remember, you don’t have to stay in greyscale all the time – you can move between black and white, and colour, at the swipe of a switch. You might decide to use colour while you’re taking photos or video-calling a friend, then move to greyscale to stop a social media binge or make your phone less appealing during homework time. Dr Graham concludes: ‘Your phone is an object and a tool. Think about how you can use it to do the things you want it to do – rather than being passive and letting the device nudge your attention this way and that.’
How do phones use colour?
Smart phones are designed to capture your attention and keep it, with vivid icons, flashing notifications and brightly coloured apps and videos. Dr Richard Graham is a consultant psychiatrist specialising in working with children and adolescents and member of the clinical board at The Soke private mental health care centre in London. He has a particular interest in the impact of technology on mental health, and describes phones as having ‘a persuasive design’ with colours that are ‘vivid and hyper-real’. Think about your favourite app, and how its colours and design are instantly recognisable.
Keeping you hooked
If you’ve ever been scrolling social media past your bedtime, promising yourself ‘just one more video’, you will understand the temptation of those intentionally bright, enticing screens. Many apps also offer filters, allowing users to make the colours on a photo or video even sharper, glittery or more vivid, or adding additional icons like rainbows, stars and hearts. But these ultra-vivid colours can also leave you feeling overstimulated and exhausted, similar to how you might feel after spending an evening at a brightly lit fairground. Dr Graham explains: ‘It’s designed to be addictive to keep you on-screen, but this hyperstimulation can lead to you feeling exhausted, depleted and emotionally blunted.’