Last year, Informate Mobile Intelligence released a report based on a study conducted on smartphone usage internationally looking at 12 different countries. The study showed that American spend, on average, 4.7 hours per day on their smartphones! This is staggering information as most people are only awake for 15-16 hours per day. While they are not using the phone exclusively, it still raises concerns and eyebrows.

What are we doing for all of that time on our cellphones? The study showed the top activities were gaming, watching video, and texting. This highlights the trend for people to consume more and more media on their phones. The study also showed that the United States using the most data per person on average, amounting to nearly 20 gigabytes per month.

What does this mean for our health? At a very simple level, using cellphones creates free-radicals in the body. Using cellphones for nearly 5 hours a day with high data transfer rates means we are producing copious amounts of free-radicals in our bodies. Free-radicals contribute to a host of health issues including cancer, anemia, aging, cellular breakdown, and birth defects.

Social media is becoming a major potion of our smartphone use. Another study concluded that Americans check their social media accounts 17 times per day, spending on average 50 minutes per day on social media apps. Again, considering most people are awake 15-16 hours per day, that means we check social media more than once per hour and spend more than 5% of our waking time on social media sites.

Besides the health issues related to such rampant cellphone use, the time wasted and constant distraction of being connected has obvious effects on what we can accomplish in a day. The trends in cellphone and smartphone use are clear: more and more people spending more and more time on them. This trend coupled with the fact that cellular radiation causes real health issues means more and more people are exposed to the health dangers. We need to become more aware, put our phones down more, and encourage others to do the same.

Sources

Mobile Marketing Watch
Informate Mobile Intelligence
Digitaltrends.com