Are smartphones take over our lives? It seems so from a new survey which found that over 50 per cent of users in the US are so used to their phones that they have to check their phones a few times every hour.
According to a poll conducted by Gallup through the web as well as emails of 15,747 US adults , 11 per cent respondents said that they check their smartphones every few minutes, while 41 per cent said that they checked it a few times an hour.
There are those who check it just once an hour (20 per cent) while the remaining 28 per cent of the respondents said that they checked their smartphones less frequently.
The report notes that the frequency with which Americans check their smartphones essentially means that they must be keeping their smartphones by their sides during the day. The data bear that assumption out: 81 per cent of smartphone users say they keep their phone near them “almost all the time during waking hours.”
The poll also highlighted the attachment Americans had to their smartphones. 63 per cent of respondents said that they kept their smartphone near them night even while sleeping. Some of this may be simple convenience if the phone is checked last thing before going to sleep and first thing upon waking. It may also reflect that many Americans use the alarm clock feature on their smartphone to wake them up each morning.
Sixty-one percent of owners claim they look at or check their smartphone less often than people they know, including 30 per cent who say they check it a lot less often. Most of the rest say their use is about average, with a scant 11 per cent admitting that they use their phone more often than others.
Why Americans tend to perceive that they monitor their smartphone less often than others is not firmly established. It’s possible that Americans either misperceive what others are doing, or that they feel it is a socially undesirable behavior and therefore want to believe that they aren’t doing it as much as others, the report notes.
The data show that even among owners who say they check their phone every few minutes, only one-third believe this is above-average behavior, and about half claim that their minute-by-minute monitoring of their smartphone is about the same as others they know. This could reflect the fact that these highly frequent phone checkers are surrounded by family or colleagues who are similar to themselves and engaging in the same type of behavior.
Most American smartphone owners keep their phones near them all day, many even while they sleep, and the majority check their phone at least a few times within every hour. The ubiquitous presence of smartphones in Americans’ lives is especially evident among younger Americans, one out of five of whom admits to checking their phone every few minutes.
