Is six hours a day on my phone too much?

This is the third year I have done an unscientific survey of my students in Media Economics about how they use their smartphones.

"WhatsApp Redesign" by Ayoub Elred is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0

The point of the exercise is for them to do their own assessment and make observations. In previous years they simply counted how many notifications or alerts they received on their phones in one hour or a class session. An alert is any ping, buzz, vibration, or lock-screen flash that tells them they have a message or news update from their various applications.

The distraction industry is getting ever more sophisticated in finding ways to get us to pay attention to their messages, because time, or attention, is money. Specifically, it allows tech platforms and news services to deliver targeted ads and make money from our attention.

An alert a minute

This year, 27 students counted notifications received in a 60-minute period. The average was 58, almost an alert a minute. The median --with half registering more, half less-- was 36. (The total alerts received was slightly more than last year and roughly three times the year before, although the unscientific methodology was slightly different each time.)