Screen Prisoners: Study Finds a Third of People Check Phones 50 Times Per Day

As smartphones get smarter and gain more and more features, people have found them becoming an ever more integral part of their lives. We use them to communicate while on the go, get our news, check up on our favorite sports teams, and stay tapped into social media.

“Constant technological improvements are allowing us to delegate more and more tasks to our phones,” says Paul Lee, head of technology, media, and telecoms research at the Deloitte Mobile Consumer report. A recent study in the United Kingdom by this organization was able to quantify just how tied to our phones we truly are.

The study, which interviewed some 4,000 people, found that almost half of the participants report checking their phone upwards of 25 times per day. In addition, one out of every ten people check their smartphones within five minutes of waking up, electing to immediately catch up on social media from the night before prior even to eating breakfast or brushing their teeth (I, admittedly, am among this group).

As you would expect, the tasks that people report using their smartphones for have incredible range, from simple texting and calling to taking and sharing photographs to following blogs and social media feeds while on the go. “The modern, touchscreen-based smartphone is less than a decade old but it is more intertwined with our lives than ever,” says Lee.

Consumer trends reflect the popularity that is expressed in this study. Over three quarters of U.K. residents own a smartphone, a 6 percent increase in the past year alone. Accordingly, over 32 million smartphones were purchased in the United Kingdom last year.

This heavy use of our phones is potentially dangerous, says Dr. Zaheer Hussain, who co-authored the Deloitte study. He says that these patterns are consistent with addictive compulsive behavior, and that smartphone distributors should be required to warn customers about their potentially dangerous effects, much the way cigarettes and alcohol must be sold with warning labels in the United States. Despite all the usefulness of smartphones, we must be sure to not allow them to take over our lives.