Jacob Weisberg, writing for The New York Review of Books:
Americans spend an average of five and a half hours a day with digital media, more than half of that time on mobile devices, according to the research firm eMarketer. Among some groups, the numbers range much higher. In one recent survey, female students at Baylor University reported using their cell phones an average of ten hours a day. Three quarters of eighteen-to-twenty-four-year-olds say that they reach for their phones immediately upon waking up in the morning.
Most importantly:
Once out of bed, we check our phones 221 times a day—an average of every 4.3 minutes—according to a UK study. This number actually may be too low, since people tend to underestimate their own mobile usage. In a 2015 Gallup survey, 61 percent of people said they checked their phones less frequently than others they knew.
And:
Our transformation into device people has happened with unprecedented suddenness. The first touchscreen-operated iPhones went on sale in June 2007, followed by the first Android-powered phones the following year. Smartphones went from 10 percent to 40 percent market penetration faster than any other consumer technology in history. In the United States, adoption hit 50 percent only three years ago. Yet today, not carrying a smartphone indicates eccentricity, social marginalization, or old age.
This all rings true. It’s who we’ve become.
I kind of like it, though. I like the access to information, the ability to read and learn, to sip from the cup of knowledge as much as I can hold.
I feel smart phones are reducing human interactions!
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat at a table, say at lunch, with everyone looking at their smartphones. Friends or co-workers or total strangers. All ignoring each other to check some random bullshit on their phones.
“Once out of bed, we check our phones 221 times a day—an average of every 4.3 minutes …”
Not me. Especially after I got my Apple Watch last April.
I don’t think this goes on forever, though. I know that for me, in 2014, after 7 years of iPhone, I really changed my habits. I stopped sipping from digital and started either drinking heartily from digital, or drinking heartily from physical. That is part of the reason why Apple Watch does not appeal to me. I feel like if it is not worth the tiny inconvenience of reaching for the device from a table or from my bag, then it is not worth doing at all.