You won't believe how much time we spend on our smartphones

Facebook won in total number of touches, racking up more finger time than native messaging and the home screen

You might have asked yourself this question many times, “Am I addicted to my smartphone?” To answer this question, researchers at dscout conducted a study which revealed that on average, a person touches his/her smartphone 2,617 times a day.

For the purpose of study, researchers recruited a demographically diverse sample of 94 Android users and tracked their interaction for the course of five days (24 hours a day) using a purpose built smartphone tool. Actions like typing, tapping, and swiping the phone's screen counted as a 'touch.'



Researchers found that average users engage in 76 phone sessions a day and spent 145 minutes.

However, the figure more than doubles for the heavy users, the top 10 per cent users, as they interact with their phones 5,427 times a day on average, which translates in 245 minutes or just over four hours every day.

If you look at it in the terms of yearly usage, it is nearly a million touches on average, and two million for those who can’t stay away from their smartphones for long.

When do we use our phone the most?

Research shows that activity drops significantly in the predawn hours and explodes right around the breakfast time at 7AM which lasts throughout the day until dinner time.

Further, the study also found that on average, 11% of participants are getting in a tap or two even at 3AM and over the five-day study, 87% of the participants checked their phones at least once between midnight and 5am.



While we all have tens, if not hundreds, of apps in our smartphones but the study found that more than half of active phone sessions were used for no more than one app.

During the course of study, participants used 700+ different apps; however, 52% of their sessions were to use a single app. No app in particular, but no more than one per session.



Another 40% of the time, people used just two or three apps. Unlike common perception, engagement is narrow and focused.

Facebook attracted most touches

As expected, Facebook won in total number of touches. The app racked up more finger time than native messaging or even the home screen.



As evident from the aforementioned graph, nothing gets us going like communication. Native messaging and social media including Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook Messenger totalled 26% and 22% of interactions respectively, while internet search browsers comprised 10%.