Forgive the personal aside at the outset, but it’s relevant to the point at hand. I remember buying my first smartphone. It was 2010 and I’d just moved back to Canada from South Korea, where I hadn’t been able to purchase an iPhone. Upon my return, I tried to hold out against the rising phenomenon of endless interconnectedness. I didn’t hold out for long. I bought an iPhone and set it up. That same day, I was in line at a coffee shop and for the first time in my life, found myself ignoring the cashier as they asked for payment. I was distracted, scrolling on my phone.
In the fifteen years since I purchased that phone, and several of its successors, smartphones have become ubiquitous. The phones are not just a device, but an extension of us, our social connections, memories, cognition, and even our consciousness. As of 2024, 98 percent of Americans owned a cell phone, 91 percent of which were smartphones. That’s a considerable leap from the 35 percent who owned a smart device when Pew began tracking ownership in 2011.
In many ways, the phones now own us. A 2025 study found that on average, Americans check their phone over 200 times a day — “almost once every five minutes while we’re awake.” As people spend hours each day scrolling or typing, over 40 percent report feeling addicted to their smartphone. Different studies yield varying results, but the through line is similar: most of us own smartphones, and most of us spend more time on them than we’d like — tethered to them at considerable personal and social cost. There are plenty of reasons to down this tool.
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Auteur: David Moscrop
