The average American spent 2.5 months on their phone in 2024

I recall, pre-iPhone, sitting in a pub waiting for a friend to arrive, staring into the middle-distance. I noticed a young man sitting at the bar with a phone. He'd pick it up, check for messages, put it down, take a sip of beer then his leg would start to judder (he was on a bar stool), then repeat the whole thing. A cadence of around 45s. "What a weirdo" I thought to myself. Turns out I was the weirdo, heh.

&gt; Methodology<p>&gt; Reviews.org surveyed 1,000 Americans 18 years and older with a +&#x2F;- 4% margin of error and a confidence level of 95%. The survey results were weighted to reflect characteristics of the United States population using available data from the US census.<p>Absent them explicitly saying otherwise, I think we need to assume that the survey was done of reviews.org visitors. Reviews.org has reviews for exactly three categories of services: internet providers, mobile phone plans and services, and TV and streaming.<p>Weighting for US demographics isn&#x27;t going to make this sample very representative—this survey is of people who are browsing reviews for a set of products that most people don&#x27;t think too hard about, which also happens to be a set of products that is tightly related to screen time use.

One of my favourite achievements of the past several years has been to actively <i>NOT</i> use my phone.<p>I started by eliminating social media accounts, which had an immediate and positive effect on my phone use.<p>Next, I set hard phone time&#x2F;day limits: no phone while hiking, no phone while at a social meetup or restaurant, no phone while shopping.<p>Finally, I focused on what I <i>should</i> use it for and stuck to only that: checking work email when I need to away from a PC (but replies wait until I get to a PC), the odd Googling when I&#x27;m away from a PC, scrolling my tech news feeds once per evening for up to 20 minutes, and of course, missed phone calls&#x2F;texts from friends and family (checked periodically, 1-2 times per day).<p>And the end result? I&#x27;m very happy with my relationship with this non-invasive piece of technology, mainly because I ensured it was non-invasive.

I was very late to the party getting a smartphone. Didn&#x27;t stop me picking up my laptop repeatedly. Visiting the same old haunts.<p>I have yet to install Facebook or Whatsapp or similar. I think it would be the death of me. I spend way too much time on my phone&#x2F;computer.<p>I was in a care giving role and felt it couldn&#x27;t leave my side. Since losing that person, I now rejoice in being able to leave my phone. Heck I didn&#x27;t turn it on yesterday. And it has been sitting in the kitchen all day today.<p>The telephone does fill me with existential dread as most communication with me is asking me for something or alerting me to something negative. Perhaps that&#x27;s an age thing. Whereas the Internet is still pleasurable but a complete and utter time suck.

Is there any hope of turning this trend around or at least keeping it where it is? I don’t think that the months spent on my phone have benefited me or anyone I know.

This Christmas, a relative&#x27;s boyfriend was on his phone literally 90% of the time we were together. Even when we were opening presents. So I started talking to him. He kept looking at his phone but eventually he put it down. I just needed to get him talking about Lord of the Rings and it was over.<p>Those of us who do not use phones at all we need to engage with these people who are suffering the worst. We need to show them that loneliness can be alleviated by other means.<p>Please do not say this is all harmless either. The material they are looking at, and behavioral programing they are being subjecting to, is not harmless. I grew up watching old school TV, and I was never able to see anything remotely close to what an 11 year old can see today.

Something new that I&#x27;ve seen is men standing at urinals on their phones. It really blew my mind that they can&#x27;t even take a pee that lasts maybe 20-30 seconds without looking at their phone. What could you possibly do in that time in that position?

I just finished reading Jonathan Haidt’s “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Caused an Epidemic of Mental Illness.” It is a good read, especially for parents.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;The_Anxious_Generation" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;The_Anxious_Generation</a>

It&#x27;s the notifications, stupid!<p>Many phone apps have completely abused the notification system, transforming it into a slot machine of dopamine. Between this and &quot;engagement&quot; being metric number one in developing mobile apps, this outcome isn&#x27;t surprising.<p>(I am militant about what gets to notify me. Most of my apps are denied notification permissions. Any apps that begin to spam me get denied as well. I also do inbox zero, so any emails I get are either dealt with in the moment or are treated as a todo for later.)<p>Ironically, as much as I loved smartphones and the iPhone in their prime, I&#x27;m thinking about going back to separate simple devices.<p>I&#x27;ve always been a &quot;simple&quot; phone user (email, reading stuff online, camera&#x2F;video, no social media, no games,no YouTube). Phones and tablets are becoming even more consumption focused, and it&#x27;s clear that market forces are leaving people like me in the dust. (I&#x27;m typing this on an eInk Boox Go that I rooted, debloated and firewalled; sucks for &quot;typical phone shit&quot; but is amazing for reading.)

Reminds me of this meme: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.redd.it&#x2F;silx0aw4a1v51.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.redd.it&#x2F;silx0aw4a1v51.jpg</a><p>Our phones replaced numerous different devices. All the time we used to spend watching TV, listening to music, reading books, getting the news, playing games, talking to friends is now done on our phones.

My theoretical strategy for reducing smartphone time includes substituting it with a smartwatch. I.e., have my phone in the vicinity (as opposed to on my person) and only have the smartwatch equipped. At night, keep the smartphone away from my bed and only have the smartwatch and Bluetooth earbuds next to me.<p>As a Pixel user, the first attempt in early 2023 was rough as the 1st gen Pixel watch had growing pains. I gave up on it but have recently started looking into this approach again. Hopefully the latest updates to WearOS will show an improvement, especially in battery life.<p>I would have considered switching to Apple, but from what I&#x27;ve seen, there is no support for responding to Signal messages via the iWatch. That&#x27;s critical functionality for me.<p>If the technology pans out and the strategy is a success, then my comments here on HN will be significantly less in 2025.

Is this &quot;reviews.org&quot; credible at all?<p>The fact this article has &quot;Best cell phone plans&quot; in the middle of it tells me NO.

As much as I&#x27;d like to support the overall sentiment of the article, or at least of the part that I actually read, the stats just don&#x27;t pass the smell test.<p>&gt; 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.<p>That just can&#x27;t be true. First of all, it assumes 1 minute of spending at the phone, every of those 1 times per 5 minutes. Totalling 5 hours a day. On <i>average</i> for <i>everybody</i>. I&#x27;m sure there are some outliers like that, but there are tons of people out there for whom there is no way they would get even close.<p>To top it off, their sample was surely neither random nor representative. Of course you get heavily biased data if you are asking a tech crowd.<p>I stopped reading at this point. Garbage in, garbage put, i.e. whatever conclusion they were eventually drawing was not based on actual facts.

I&#x27;m 100% happy with my Nokia 110, only using smart phone at home for banking apps etc. Highly recommend switching to dumb phone for everyday use.

Any easy way to aggregate all of one’s screen time data? On an iPhone, the data is limited to a few weeks in the screen time settings.

<i>&gt; Reviews.org surveyed 1,000 Americans 18 years and older with a +&#x2F;- 4% margin of error and a confidence level of 95%.</i> [1]<p>Can one just dictate the error margin on a survey now?<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reviews.org&#x2F;mobile&#x2F;cell-phone-addiction&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reviews.org&#x2F;mobile&#x2F;cell-phone-addiction&#x2F;</a>

good bye books<p>good bye deep thoughts<p>good bye creativity<p>good bye critical thinking<p>turns out soma isn&#x27;t a pill, but a screen

That’s 20.83% I don’t think it’s that far off.<p>I just opened screen time in my iPhone, checked devices for phone, selected weekly tab, and flipped back last few weeks to get average of 42 hours per week, with 168 hours in a week puts me at 25% for December.<p>I’m apparently above average!

I try to get around with just an apple watch. The most frustrating part is needing (or worrying I&#x27;ll need) to take an uber or a lyft (my main modes of transport). They discontinued their watch apps and their api&#x27;s are very locked down.

I would just like to note that &quot;on the phone&quot; here seemingly doesn&#x27;t include the actual act of <i>being on the phone</i> (read: making&#x2F;taking phone calls).

Rather than calling to question their methods it’s Sunday so we all just got told our screen time for the week what do you guys got? ~4h a day which is 2 months..

&gt; 27% use or look at their phone while driving<p>The other 73% aren&#x27;t admitting it. When I&#x27;ve driven down the street, seeing someone not on their phone is a rarity.

I often stream music or cast video thru the phone and do something like make dinner or clean, i suspect that time is in there too

Wait, why would you text someone in the same room? Like, to send them a video you&#x27;re watching?

I&#x27;m reading a lot of comments here that are defensive about their phone usage. I think that misses the point. It&#x27;s fine to chase productivity (real or otherwise) and we can all rationalize how we burn our spare minutes: decompression, etc.<p>Being able to be bored and have those creative thoughts enter is for sure a useful thing. I&#x27;d argue the more important thing is being comfortable with silence&#x2F;boredom. Being able to sit in a meeting and let awkward silence stew; or make a sales pitch and quietly let the gears turn, is a super power. If you&#x27;re the one at the table better with silence, you have an inherent advantage.<p>Context: I&#x27;d put myself in the very low phone usage category but I still use my phone far more than I&#x27;d like. I pretty much just check email&#x2F;text, HN, a bit of news, and occasionally doom scroll reddit. I&#x27;m also a developer turned exec&#x2F;sales guy.

I could never go 9.5 months without my phone.

That&#x27;s like 5 hours per day? Doesn&#x27;t seem the case for me even I consider myself pretty addicted. I don&#x27;t even have 5 hours of free time in total, including poop and food time. But maybe average Americans do spend more time then me.

Silicon Valley: How can we DOUBLE that?

horrors! commmoners computing in the open!<p>nobody complains when you&#x27;re a nerd spending 9 months a year on your laptop.<p>HN delivering that steady stream of Sunday ragebait as always