Here’s good information (or reminder) about smartphone use from the Washington Post, as summarized by the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society…
For many of us, checking our phones has probably become an unconscious reflex, similar to breathing or blinking. Glancing at your phone can begin to compromise your cognitive skills once it passes a certain threshold. Studies from Nottingham Trent University in the U.K. and Keimyung University in South Korea found that checking your phone about 110 times a day may signal high risk or problematic use. Over eight years of research involving teenagers and millennials, Larry Rosen, a professor emeritus of psychology at California State University, Dominguez Hills, observed that participants checked or unlocked their smartphones between 50 and more than 100 times per day, on average every 10 to 20 minutes while awake. “The phones and digital media are reinforcing for our brains, activating the same reward pathway as drugs and alcohol. The phones create a compulsive habit loop where we check without thinking and experience withdrawal when we don’t check or don’t have access to our phone,” said Anna Lembke, a professor of psychiatry and addiction medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine.
Pew Research Center