Since smartphones really began to dominate the mobile space in 2009 and 2010, society has adapted to everyone being on their phone all the time. Teens and young adults are the ones using their smartphones the most – and that’s mostly because they’ve grown up with them, while parents haven’t. And now a new study from Pew shows that teenagers are aware that they are addicted to their smartphones.
According to the study, about 54-percent of teens feel that they spend too much time on their smartphone, while about 36-percent of parents believe they spend to much time on their smartphone. When it comes to checking their phone for messages as soon as they wake up, 44-percent of teens said they often do, while 28-percent said sometimes. For parents, those numbers were 26-percent and 32-percent. Now the numbers really differ when it comes to whether “their parent/teen is distracted by their phone when having in-person conversations”. Teens answered often 14-percent, and 37-percent for sometimes, while the numbers are 30-percent and 42-percent for parents. This is likely because parents don’t use their smartphones as much, because they didn’t grow up on this technology like teens have.
Do you feel like you’re spending too much time on your phone? Well 54-percent of teenagers do. While about 35-percent feel that it’s the right amount of time. For social media, about 41-percent believe it’s too much time, and 43-percent believe it’s about the right time. However, around 52-percent of teenagers have cut back their time on smartphones, and 57-percent on social media. That’s actually a good thing, especially since we already spend way to much time on our smartphones. The numbers in this study are likely not all that surprising. Especially given how smartphones are essentially glued to our hands these days. It would be interesting to see these numbers among more age groups, however.
