The average Brit will check their phone more than 10,000 times in a typical year – but almost 4,000 of these times are done completely out of habit rather than necessity.
A survey of smartphone users has revealed we’ll unlock our phone 28 times each day, but we consider ten of these compulsive acts – checking with no particular goal in mind.
One in ten phone enthusiasts even confess to opening their device more than 60 times in a 24-hour period, while just over a third of smartphone users would describe themselves as addicted to checking their device.
Greg Tatton-Brown, spokesperson for online casino Casumo.com, said:
Our smart devices have become an essential part of modern life and checking them regularly is second nature for most users.
However the instances of compulsive checking are much higher than we would have imagined, showing our phones are as much a habit as they are an aide to our busy lifestyles and an immediate source of entertainment, from wherever we are.
In the survey of 2,000 smartphone users, Facebook was identified as the app we feel compelled to check in with most regularly.
Free instant messenger service WhatsApp took second in the countdown followed by Google email client, Gmail.
Online auction house eBay, video sharing service YouTube and Facebook Messenger all made it into the top ten.
However, when asked which app they considered to be most useful to them, Facebook was unseated from the top spot by Google Maps.
WhatsApp and Gmail both appeared ahead of the social media giant in terms of utility.
In the social stakes, the average Brit has two social media apps downloaded on their phone. Forty per cent named Facebook as their favourite social app, followed by Instagram and Twitter.
Over a third of smartphone owners, surveyed by OnePoll.com, use their phone as their preferred method of browsing the internet, with just 32 per cent using their laptop instead.
It also emerged how on a typical day, a smartphone user will access their favourite app 12 times, spending 17 minutes each day using it.
As for total phone usage, we’ll spend 58 minutes checking our devices daily.
The average user has uninstalled three apps in the last six months and one in six currently have an app on their phone they would like to uninstall, but can’t figure out how to.
Yet despite using them every day, seven per cent of Brits couldn’t tell us what ‘App’ – an abbreviation of ‘Application’ – was short for.
Greg Tatton-Brown added:
Despite the presence of more useful apps, Facebook is the service which wins our time in the end.
Gmail, Maps and a host of messaging services may help us more to organise our lives, but checking our updates on Facebook remains truly compulsive viewing instead of consciously looking for an entertaining break away from our daily routines.
Other apps to make up the top 20 include Snapchat, Spotify, Google Play, Skype, Apple Music, Google Play Music, Google Hangouts and Netflix.
Gmail, Instagram, Google Chrome, Facebook Messenger and Twitter also scored high.
A former emo kid who talks too much about 8Chan meme culture, the Kardashian Klan, and how her smartphone is probably killing her. Francesca is a Cardiff University Journalism Masters grad who has done words for BBC, ELLE, The Debrief, DAZED, an art magazine you’ve never heard of and a feminist zine which never went to print.