The Average American Spent 2.5 Months On Their Phone In 2024 (pcmag.com) 49
Americans check their phones an average of 205 times a day, a 42.3% increase from last year. Millennials are leading the charts in frequency, attachment, and anxiety over phone use, while Gen Z spends the most time daily on their devices at over six hours. PCMag reports: There's a good chance that you're currently reading this article on your phone. If you're like one of the Americans surveyed by Reviews.org, this is one of 205 times today that you'll be checking the device in your hand. To spare you opening the calculator app, that's about once every five minutes you are awake or two and a half full months out of your year.
That's an alarming 42.3% rise from last year when the reviews company asked the same question and found people checked their phones 144 times per day. Some of the ways they spend those 205 moments are:
- 80.6% check their phones within the first 10 minutes of waking up
- 65.7% use their phone on the toilet
- 53.7% have texted someone in the same room
- 38.1% use or look at their phone while on a date
- 27% use or look at their phone while driving
And, of course, there are those many, many times when people check their notifications, with 76% checking their phones within five minutes of receiving one. Millennials are the fastest on the draw, with 89.5% of them checking within 10 minutes. Gen Z and Gen X have found common ground (finally), with 84% of each group looking at notifications shortly after receiving them. Boomers and the Silent Generation aren't as anxious to see who is trying to reach them, with 69% and 53.3%, respectively, checking their notifications within a few minutes.
That's an alarming 42.3% rise from last year when the reviews company asked the same question and found people checked their phones 144 times per day. Some of the ways they spend those 205 moments are:
- 80.6% check their phones within the first 10 minutes of waking up
- 65.7% use their phone on the toilet
- 53.7% have texted someone in the same room
- 38.1% use or look at their phone while on a date
- 27% use or look at their phone while driving
And, of course, there are those many, many times when people check their notifications, with 76% checking their phones within five minutes of receiving one. Millennials are the fastest on the draw, with 89.5% of them checking within 10 minutes. Gen Z and Gen X have found common ground (finally), with 84% of each group looking at notifications shortly after receiving them. Boomers and the Silent Generation aren't as anxious to see who is trying to reach them, with 69% and 53.3%, respectively, checking their notifications within a few minutes.
We've reached the end of civilization (Score:2)
Re:We've reached the end of civilization (Score:5, Informative)
Nah, I can go days without checking my mobile phone and I often forget it home when I go out. As a matter of fact, most of the time I check it, it's to see if it needs recharging since leaving it always plugged in might wear out the battery faster I heard.
Re:We've reached the end of civilization (Score:5, Informative)
since leaving it always plugged in might wear out the battery faster I heard.
That was true way back when, but these days the devices and chargers are much more intelligent and will usually just top the battery off with a trickle charge rather than force-charging it at full power.
These days I think you can leave most things like phones, tablets, laptops, etc plugged in indefinitely without harm.
Re: (Score:2)
YMMV with linux drivers. You may need to write custom scripts for optimal results.
For my iphone, I enabled smart charging but it still charges the battery too much for my taste and I don't want to fiddle with the iOS so it's fine with me to check once in a while.
Trusting the makers to make your device going to waste slower is still a big leap for me.
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still charges the battery too much for my taste
Stop tasting your phone and leave the engineering to the engineer who actually has detailed knowledge of the device. Otherwise you're not better than a Capricorn 31/12/24: Thanks to the position of Jupiter will wake up worried today about something that may be irrelevant to their life.
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And just to explain the joke to the people who may not get it: You have insufficient knowledge about the device in order to have any "taste" on how to optimally charge it. Your understanding is no better about how to manage the phone's battery than that of an astrologer predicting your life.
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since leaving it always plugged in might wear out the battery faster I heard.
That was true way back when, but these days the devices and chargers are much more intelligent and will usually just top the battery off with a trickle charge rather than force-charging it at full power.
It still is true today. All modern devices with lithium-based batteries (i.e. all smartphones) use CCCV charging which uses constant voltage (typically 4.2 V) at the end of the charging cycle. This will keep the battery at 100% charge which is detrimental to battery life [maxamps.com]. Lithium-based batteries should best be stored at mid-level charge (about 60%).
Nihilistic, but yea (Score:2)
Most of the time, sarcasm is a better version of reality.
They probably spend a couple months' salary on em (Score:2)
too for the privilege of quality time wastage.
And ignores gender based phone usage skew (Score:5, Informative)
Misses that girls and women use significantly more phone time everyday than boys and men.
9th grade girls 59% report excessive phone use (would be ages 14 to 15)
9th grade boys 35.6 report excessive phone use (would be ages 14 to 15)
Table 1 from the paper
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/a... [nih.gov]
JMIR Pediatr Parent. 2021 Nov 22;4(4):e30889. doi: 10.2196/30889
Gender-Based Differences and Associated Factors Surrounding Excessive Smartphone Use Among Adolescents: Cross-sectional Study
Emma Claesdotter-Knutsson 1,, Frida André 2, Maria Fridh 3, Carl Delfin 2, Anders Hakansson 4, Martin Lindström 5
Editors: Sherif Badawy, Gunther Eysenbach
Reviewed by: Theoneste Ntalindwa, Eugenia Toki
PMCID: PMC8663478 PMID: 34813492
What's a quality usages of a phone? (Score:3)
This total time used metric needs some sort of baseline and breakdown into categories.
- What is done on the phone versus what could be done with no electronics. For example, reading an ebook versus reading a paperback book
- What is done on the phone which is short format versus long format. For example an hour of 45 second TikTok videos versus watching a 1 hour documentary or training video on gardening
- Number of 20 minute time segments per day which are interrupted for phone interaction. Google "Multita
Re: (Score:2)
Well yeah, texting your girlfriends endlessly is fine on a phone, but watching copious amounts of porn is better done on a large screen. ;-)
Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
>"Americans check their phones an average of 205 times a day"
Wow. I must be a very abnormal person. Most days I check the phone only if I have a notification. And that maybe happens zero to once a day. I might use it occasionally to get a 2FA. Sometimes I will play Candy Crush, *silently* at lunch on the rare occasion I am alone.
I don't let my phone control me. There are zero social media accounts attached to it. And zero other things sending me notifications, except things that are actually important- a personal text message or a piece of equipment down. Otherwise, there is nothing as important as what I am actively doing, especially at work, that I want interruptions.
When I want to see what is going on out there, I pick MY time and sit at my nice desk at home with a big screen and real keyboard/mouse. I check and write Email, check news, look at Slashdot, watch some videos, perform research, etc.
I don't understand why this is apparently impossible for the vast majority of people.
Re: (Score:3)
I'm probably above the average count described, but that doesn't stop me from being productive, quite the contrary.
However, I am also not representative, because of my ADHD. The phone, to me, is actually a welcome change which helps me switch gears back and forth with minimum downtime.
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I don't understand why this is apparently impossible for the vast majority of people.
I mean this with the deepest respect... it's apparently impossible for the vast majority of people for the same reason that apparently not spending time watching/talking about sportsball is impossible. And not having kids is impossible. And not being religious is impossible.
People do what they do - mostly - because it gives them pleasure.
Now, you can throw out phrases like "I don't let my phone control me", but think about what you're implying. The insinuation is that everyone else is being controlle
Re: (Score:2)
>"Bottom line... yeah, you are a very abnormal person. Maybe you don't have a life"
LOL- I was waiting for someone to say that. I do have a life, but I choose not to be interrupted all the time.
Your explanations are appreciated. There is a big difference between choosing to actively use the phone for a purpose (navigation, research, calculator, 2FA, finding a price, checking meetings, etc) and being interrupted by things "demanding" attention (social media posts, cutesy texts, etc). My posting was most
It's not triggering my Dopamine (Score:2)
I get a lot of "I sent you that message over 40 minutes ago!" when I reply to someone. Sometimes I feel bad, but I'm slowly realizing that I'm not the broken one.
Seriously, fuck this always connected bullshit. I'll take the world in at my own pace. I don't need to drink from the firehose of human interaction.
Especially when that interaction is shallow and unrewarding.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, I treat direct, personal, important communication very differently than everything else. I give that high priority- to the point I have an app that will "nag" me with repeated audible/vibe alerts if not seen/cleared. This is one reason I lock out as much other stuff as possible, and tell friends/family to Email, not text, anything not very important- so that when I am notified, it is nearly certain to be something worth interrupting me.
I had to block alerts on a few people that would not comply with
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Do you go outside away from your home with nice desk, big screen, keyboard, and mouse? :P
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I think that I am mostly on-par with the statistics given in the bullet points.
Even still, I may be delusional, but I still think my phone usage is below average since I don't have any kind of social media on my phone.
I mostly use it for podcasts, MFA, SMS/RCS, e-mail (checking but not responding), toilet distraction gaming, phone calls and web browser for lookups (in that order).
I keep the phone in the other room when I go to bed, but it is the first thing I grab when I come down stairs and go into the kit
That makes up for me... (Score:1)
I spent about 10 minutes a week on mine, and part of that was just the time spent unlocking it to reply to messages.
More than that... (Score:2)
But most of that is just reading on the Kindle App
The phone fits in my pocket, I have a Kindle Fire, but it is not as convenient.
Also the phone connects to my hearing aids, so I can listen to music (Musicolet app, I buy .MP3s from Amazon, but the Amazon music app sux) or watch prime video (when I am home).
Holy crap (Score:2)
I'd be surprised if I spent more than a dozen hours or so on my phone in all of 2024. I just don't use it much, no web browsing, almost no email, and not a lot of texting.
I do a lot of stuff on my PC, but my phone? Nah. (I do use a tablet a lot, but a phone just doesn't do it for me.)
I do salute anyone who can watch a movie or TV on their phone; for me it's like watching the show through the gun slit of a tank.
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Yeah, I am old enough now that I need readers to see small text on my phone. I would never even consider watching media, of any kind, on my phone.
That said, I do have the streaming apps on the phone for casting to to the treadmill TV, that's it.
I can't be doing the math right... (Score:3)
In front of a computer I can believe, but a phone with a small screen and no real input device? Wow.
Addiction device working as intended.
Re: (Score:2)
That's FIVE hours a day? I bet most don't even do work for five hours in an 8 hour work day.
I can assure you, I know of at least one person where I work who is probably closer to seven hours a day. I almost never see them not on their phone. This includes going from one place to the next or walking outside. Their head is always bent down looking at their phone.
Re: (Score:2)
I live in Minneapolis and walk the skyway every work day over lunch. It am constantly tracking, and altering my course to avoid, unaware slow-moving doom scrollers.
Re: I can't be doing the math right... (Score:2)
Well, I suppose it depends on what is counted as "using your phone". I cook a lot. As I cook, I usually have my phone on playing some youtube video or twitch stream. Prepping ungredients, cooking, pots cleaning, later dishes cleaning. That's easily 2 to 3 hours a day depending on the complexity of the meal.
When I work from home, the various coffee breaks are often doing something stupid on my phone. Can be an other hour aggregated in the day.
My wife and I put grocery lists on a shared google doc. So grocery
Even WITH context I'd have been alarmed (Score:2)
Imagine going back in time 20 years and handing this headline to your past self.
It was ... (Score:2)
Hmmm (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
So what do you want to call them? And based on whose usage stats should be follow the naming convention?
Is it an emailing machine like my work phone?
A game console like my wife's Pokemon Go phone (yes she has dedicated her old phone specifically to play Pokemon Go so she doesn't kill the battery on her current one).
Maybe it's a TV since I binge watched a netflix series on my phone today.
Or we could call it a textamatron for all the girls spending all night whatsapping each other.
The majority of my battery w
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I propose Pocket PC! ;)
Not I, said the codevark.. (Score:1)
Wow, I must be from the mid 1800's (Score:2)
Of course, I have to find it first, so there's another disincentive.
Re: Proof positive: (Score:2)
I live in a cellular dead zone. The dumb phone would literally be useless. Calls can be forwarded to a VoIP line, but texts cannot be. A smartphone can make calls over Wifi.
Cell networks have been compromised, and it has become a public enough problem that some branches of the US government are recommending switching to E2EE services such as WhatsApp or Signal.
A smartphone has a lot of utility other than making calls, in any case. Apps for me replace a magnifier, calculator, alarm clock, rolodex, calendar,
Scrolling on the can (Score:2)
I can see value in taking the phone to the toilet with you, if you think you're going to be there a while. Maybe it will take a few minutes to get things moving, and you're better off with a distraction and just letting it happen without forcing, if you're going to be sitting there either way.
Re: (Score:1)
I don't know if it's just me but I find the idea of taking my phone out in the bathroom really gross.
Re: (Score:2)
Set it down before you start wiping, and don't touch it with that hand again until you've washed. Also, assuming your phone is at least splashproof, try gently washing it a couple times a week -- not just because of bathroom habits, either. Your phone is probably the second dirtiest thing your choose to hold onto for extended periods of time. The first is your steering wheel.
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Maybe TMI, but I have evolved the need to distract my brain to allow autonomous systems do their waste purge routines. It started when I was a kid and would always have a book at hand. Failing that, I would read the ingredients on the shampoo bottle or soap dispenser. However, my eyes are too old for that now so, instead, I solve simple puzzles on my phone. (FYI, best app I have found for this purpose is a game called Dissembler... it may as well have been purpose made for this very task)
Yes and no (Score:1)
Yes, internet connected pocket computers are a sea change in history. It would be stupid to deny that.
OTOH, I remember these same stories about how much time people spent on the web. And before that, how much time on watching TV. (And no doubt, before that, on reading comic books or magazines ... though before TV is well before my time, lol.)
So on the one hand, yes, we've probably lost something, looking at our phones whenever an idle moment might have otherwise caused us to just stand and think. On the o
You average time, not Americans (Score:2)
"Americans Spent an average of 2.5 Months On Their Phone In 2024"
Yes, yes, I know. It's just a peeve of mine.
Turned off notifications almost everywhere (Score:1)