According to a survey conducted by Reviews.org, many Americans spend a lot of their waking day with their smartphones. The survey was conducted with 1,000 people in the fourth quarter of 2025. This was not a high-accuracy survey, and the results have an accuracy of plus or minus 4%. But the overall trends are clear, and the survey results don’t vary a lot from year to year. Consider some of the following statistics:
The average participant in the survey used their phone 5 hours and 1 minute per day, which works out to 83 days of the entire year. Boomers used their phones the least, at an average of 2 hours and 8 minutes per day.
The average American checks their smartphone 186 times per day. That works out to almost 8 times per hour. This is lower than the statistic from 2024 of 205 times per day.
84% of respondents checked their phone within ten minutes of getting out of bed.
50% of people sleep with their phone by their bed.
Something that doesn’t surprise anybody who has gone to a restaurant lately, 56% of respondents use their phone while eating dinner.
71% of respondents check their phone within five minutes of getting a notification.
Something that sounds icky to me, 68% of people use their phone while sitting on the toilet.
87% of people use their phone while watching TV.
72% of respondents use their phone while at work.
A scary statistic is that 29% of respondents use their phone while driving.
61% of respondents have texted somebody who is in the same room.
53% of respondents have never gone an entire day without using their smartphone.
41% of respondents panic when their battery drops below 20%.
Probably the most telling statistic is that 46% of respondents say they are addicted to their smartphone. This is up from 43% reported in the 2024 survey.
I’m not a big smartphone user, and these statistics always surprise me. The statistics help to explain why the new converged bundle of broadband and cellular is so powerful.
I guess today is a classic example of a day, or period of time, without my cell phone.
For one, I have using cellular technology since roughly 1993, which makes me an early adopter. At the time, I had just been hired by a cellular company and had one installed in my car. There were very obvious reasons that this new technology was going to make or break my job, and I succeeded beyond my wildest dreams.
Of late, I am still a big user, though I try very hard to keep much of my personal data off the phone. For one, I have very bad finger dexterity — had that since I was a kid — and cell phones require pretty good – to – excellent manual dexterity… which I do not have.
Secondly, I just don’t trust cellular companies to protect my data… it does not seem to be in their business plan to provide a sufficient amount of protection. I prefer to use a laptop for work and personal business because I believe the ISPs provide better protection for me.
OK, prove me wrong.
Back to today. I have the day off, and spent the last couple of hours getting the oil changed in one of our cars. Then I realized my cell phone was not with me. Now I had two crossword puzzles from last Sunday and today’s Wash. Post available to read… but I perseverated for the next hour or two over where I left my cell phone. Turns out it was at home on a shelf.
That, my friends, is addiction withdrawals.