Half of all smartphone owners check their phones a few times per hour or even more, and most keep their phones by their side all day, every day….yet most think they look at their phones less than their friends.
In the latest “everyone can’t be better-than-average looking” finding, a new Gallup poll shows that 61 percent of smartphone users believe they check their phone less often than others, including 30 percent who say “a lot less often” than others. Only 11 percent say they check a little (or a lot) more often than others.
We have both a statistical and a social problem here.
The results are self-reported, so who knows what they really indicate. But it’s hard to read them without realizing that A:) People seem to believe that checking their smartphones a lot is bad and B:) people have unrealistic ideas about how guilty they are of doing so.
“Why Americans tend to perceive that they monitor their smartphone less often than others is not firmly established,” Gallup said. “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 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.”
The survey found that 81 said they kept their phones nearby during every waking hour.
Not surprisingly, younger people look more often at their phones. Those aged 18-29 were by far the most likely to admit checking their phones “every few minutes” — 22 percent do so, compared to 12 percent for the 30-49 crowd.
There’s no significant difference between Android and iPhone users. There’s no gender difference. Those with less education are less likely to be slaves to the smartphones they own.
Results are based on 15,747 members of the Gallup Panel who have smartphones, conducted April 17-May 18, 2015. The sample for this study was weighted to be demographically representative of the U.S. adult population.
Frequent smartphone checking isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It becomes bad when it interferes with other things — relationships or work — when the phone “owns” you, in a matter of speaking. But as I’ve chronicled in The Restless Project, I am worried that smartphones are stealing all the world’s daydreams. Look around at a bus stop, or a coffee shop — if you pick your head up long enough — and you’ll see an overwhelming number of faces buried into their gadgets. You won’t see people staring off into space, which is a vastly underrated part of the human experience. Daydreams provide the brain with critical time for creativity, and with critical rest. Smartphones fill up all that time with….well, generally with the digital equivalent of junk food.
What’s the most important lesson from this Gallup research? If you aren’t troubled by your own smartphone use, because you think you use your phone less than others, there’s a good chance you are lying to yourself. Daydream on that a little today.
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