Smartphones were meant to make life easier, but a new study suggests that one third of notifications which pop up cause a downturn in our mood.

A team at Nottingham Trent University investigated the effect on mood as 50 participants received thousands of digital alerts over a five-week period.

Out of more than half a million notifications, they found that 32 per cent resulted in negative emotions, triggering users to feel hostile, upset, nervous, afraid or ashamed.

Notifications relating to non-human activity – such as general phone updates and wifi availability – had the worst impact on phone users’ mood, the researchers found.