If former Miss World, Agbani Darego was asked today what 5 items she would absolutely love to have with her in a desert, I am pretty sure she would include having a smart phone! Because if you are a millenial or a Gen Z, your phone – a smart phone of course! – is like a part of your body; like your eyes, or you arms, your simply cannot imagine life without it.
And for this reason, you are always staring at your phone, expecting the latest message from your bestie, tweeting about your football club’s latest win, liking Kendall Jenner’s latest Instagram pic, and commenting on who wore it better, Genevieve Nnaji or Tiwa Savage. And in all, you spend 8 hours doing this, and 5 hours just staring at your phone!
The survey found that 23 participants within the 18-33 age bracket checked their phones about once every 10 minutes – up to 85 times a day! Scientists placed an app on test subjects’ phones in order to track how often participants checked their screens, used an app, listened to music, or checked the time.
The study also revealed people accessed their phones twice as often as they thought. It also found mobile use was typically confined to short periods of time, with more than half of the sessions lasting less than 30 seconds.
Speaking about the findings, one of the scientists, Dr Sally Andrews said:
We put an app on peoples phones which measures how often they used their phones. As a result we managed to get an objective measure of people’s smartphone use but we also asked them to give their own measurement.
We found that their own perceived usage was often a lot lower than their usage in reality. Also, people checked their phones more in afternoon and evening than they did at in the morning or at night time. Users spent one third of their day on their phones assuming that they slept for eight hours.
It’s definitely nothing to be ashamed of. You belong to the jet set age, so rock it! Just don’t go checking your phone on the road, beside dangerous machinery, while driving (if you do already), or generally in places where extra care and caution is required. Be safe friends.
