292 Hours...

In the UK, a new iPhone 11 costs £729 for the most basic model, and, depending on your point of view, it’s totally worth it or completely overpriced. BUT, a smartphone doesn’t just cost money….

The average smartphone user spends 3 hours and 15 minutes on their phone each day. Now, being incredibly generous, let’s say that 75% of that time is essential, useful or productive time - that’s still over 48 minutes a day of mindless scrolling. And, continuing the generosity, let’s say that 75% of that non-essential use couldn’t be used for anything else (e.g. a quick check in the supermarket queue), we would still end up with 12 minutes a day that could be spent doing something more useful. Not much….

Unless you present it another way - as 75 hours a year, or two working weeks.

But let’s not be generous, let’s make it a more realistic 50% and 50% - that suddenly becomes an eye-watering 292 hours a year.

I wonder how much knowledge we would gain in 292 hours if we carried a book alongside our smartphone, and turned to that a few times each day instead…

p.s. I’m no saint here - I spend a LOT of time on my laptop, but still managed an average of 1hr 13m a day on my phone last week. More worryingly, I picked up my phone an average of 53 times a day. Time for a change, I think…