35% of people say playing things out loud is their biggest digital ick

• The biggest digital ick of all is playing things out loud from your phone – whether that’s TikToks, voice notes, or phone calls.
• 17% of people are turned off by ‘sent from my iPhone’.
• A Hotmail email address and using Bing also made the list.

If you’ve ever partaken in any form of online dating in recent years, you may have come across the term “ick”. Or maybe you’ve been around someone and got an inexplicable of “yeah, I don’t like that”. If so, what you’ve experienced there is an ick, or a turnoff.

While icks are prevalent in dating, they can also be experienced in the digital world, where many of us spend a huge amount of our day. If you’ve ever been browsing online or just out and about in the world, you may have experienced a digital ick, but which are the worst offenders? Domain and hosting provider, Fasthosts, were curious, so they asked the question: What is your biggest digital ick?

Playing things out loud from your phone

Taking the top spot by far was people who play things out loud from their phone. Whether it’s watching TikToks on the bus at full volume, playing a two minute voice note from the group WhatsApp, or just having a conversation on speakerphone, 35% of people absolutely hate it when you play things out loud. This can be officially dubbed the biggest digital ick of them all. If only there were some inventions out there – that could be used with your ears – to ensure that only you can hear what’s going on…

‘Sent from my iPhone’

What started as a thinly veiled humblebrag at owning the newest and hottest piece of tech, quickly became incredibly cringe when everyone started to own iPhones, the email signature ‘sent from my iPhone’ gave 17% of people the digital ick. Whether you’re too technically-challenged to turn it off, or you still consider it part of your online identity, this ick comes in a joint second. It’s time to turn it off, and just accept that iPhones are mainstream now.

Having 999+ unread emails

Do you read and delete emails instantly? Or do you let them accumulate in your inbox until even your email provider stops trying to keep up with the count? Coming in joint second was the digital ick of having 999+ unread emails, with 17% of people considering them a scarlet letter on your phone’s home screen.

Not using keyboard shortcuts

If you consider yourself techy, then you may find yourself identifying with this one. 7% of people don’t like it when someone doesn’t use keyboard shortcuts – so they right click and select ‘copy’ instead of doing CTRL+C. If you feel triggered by this, then there’s a high chance you work with spreadsheets and enjoy shaving milliseconds off your Excel functions.

Using Bing instead of Chrome

Google is considered by many to be the king of search engines, with no alternatives measuring up. Bing is probably the second most well-known, but it’s also the one your new laptop comes with, and that you use to download Chrome. Even though both technically do the same job, 7% of people still said using Bing over Google was their digital ick, an ick that probably extends to other search engines too.

Hotmail email

If you remember having a Hotmail email address, then you’re probably a long time user of the internet, and 5% of people admitted to cringing over @hotmail.com. But it’s safe to say that Gmail dominates when it comes to email hosts, with around 1.8 billion users worldwide – it’s a Chrome vs Bing but for emails. Seeing that Microsoft actively encouraged users to make the change to Outlook 11 years ago, even the creators wanted to wave goodbye.

Only using your index finger to scroll

This is probably a habit that plagues older generations, or those who were late to switching over to touchscreens, but it must still be common practice. Nowadays, most people use their thumb to scroll and type, and 5% of people said they’d shudder with second hand embarrassment at the sight of someone using their index finger alone to scroll.

Facebook check-ins

Remember “checking in” to every destination you visited, whether it was the local coffee shop or an airport to boast you were jetting off on holiday, along with a nonchalant status update? Thankfully, checking in seems to have become much less frequently practised, but perhaps not enough, as 1% of people voted Facebook check-ins to be their biggest digital ick. It seems that nobody wants to know where you are every second of the day anymore. Who knew?