Feeling attached to your phone lately? You’re not alone.
Jose Briones, a YouTube reviewer of retro tech, digital minimalist and once avid smartphone user, broke it off with his smartphone five years ago after realizing how much time he was spending on it and how lonely it made him feel. He felt a self-described addiction peaking during the COVID-19 pandemic when his phone told him he had accumulated 13 hours of screen time in one day.
“I started spending more time online,” Briones told HuffPost. “Online entertainment started to replace my positive habits and behaviors.” He stopped going to the gym, relied on his smartphone to order Uber Eats more often, gained 20 pounds and always felt a mental fog he couldn’t shake.
According to a 2022 Gallup poll, more than half of Americans believe they spend too much time on their smartphones. A more recent survey actually found that smartphone users reach for theirs an average of 205 times daily, or once every five minutes. (For millennials, that number is 324 times a day.) That can be a troubling statistic to read if you’d like to maintain productivity throughout your waking hours.
But really: How much smartphone is too much smartphone? And how do you know if your smartphone usage is affecting your mind? We spoke to some experts to ask how to recognize if we’re using our devices too much.
