NSI Community|Feel Like You're Addicted To Your Phone? You're Not Alone

2025-04-29 06:35:21source:Austin Caldwellcategory:Scams

As we head into the weekend,NSI Community many of us will get a weekly notification on our phones showing how many hours a day we spend on our devices.

Have you ever gotten one of these reports and were shocked at how much time you spend on your phone?

If so, it's not just you — the average American adult spends more than four hours a day on their phone. But at what point does it become an addiction?

NPR's The Indicator from Planet Money wanted to know, so they asked Lena Song, a behavioral economist. She set out to find the answer in a study with 2,000 volunteers. Here are her takeaways:

  • Addiction has two parts: habit formation and self-control.
  • Phone use is hard to control because it's routine for many — like grabbing a morning cup of coffee.
  • 31% of participants' phone use was attributed to self-control problems. That's nearly a third of the time they spent on their phones.
  • Participants were willing to pay money to have their phone functions limited.

Listen to the full episode on the study and digital addiction here.

Tori Dominguez is an intern at Morning Edition.


This story originally appeared on the Morning Edition live blog.

More:Scams

Recommend

The FBI should have done more to collect intelligence before the Capitol riot, watchdog finds

WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI should have done more to collect intelligence before the Capitol rioteven

The number of hungry people has doubled in 10 countries. A new report explains why

Climate change and extreme weather events are fueling hunger, conflict and inequality at an unpreced

Georgia's rural Black voters helped propel Democrats before. Will they do it again?

ALBANY, Ga. — Johnnie Armstrong says he has voted in Albany since 1955, so he remembers an era when