What consumers do on their phones

We know that people are using their phones more than ever, but do we know what people are actually doing on their phones?

Seven large studies have been published over the last couple of years that shed light on how first-world consumers use their phone. I’m going to save you some time by walking through the key takeaways. This is not a scientific article but, rather, a collection of other people’s observations that tell the greater story of what consumers are doing on their phones.

All sources are linked to at the bottom of this article and in the bottom-left of visualizations. I highly encourage you to dive into each source individually if you are interested. You can also check out Blank Slate’s recommended reading to stay up-to-date with future data trends.

Alright, let’s get into the numbers…

Checks per day

How many times do we use our phones every day?

• Tecmark [1]: the average consumer completes 221 tasks a day on their phone, but consumers can complete multiple tasks in a single session.
• Deloitte [2]: we check our phones approximately 47 times a day. That number rises to 82 times a day for 18- to 24-year-olds.
• PLOS [4]: The average consumer uses their phones 84 times a day
• dscout [5]: The average consumer uses their phone 76 times a day

These numbers are in line with Apple’s revelation in 2016 that the average iPhone user unlocks their phone 80 times a day.

It’s worth noting that, KPCB’s often-misunderstood ‘150 times a day’ stat is how many times consumers check their phone everyday, not use it. A ‘check’ includes glances when you look at a notification on your phone’s screen but don’t use or unlock your phone.

So, consumers check their phone ~150 times a day and use their phone ~80 times a day:

Time spent

So how long do we spend on our phone and what’s the average session length?

• KPCB [6]: The average consumer in the US spends 5 hours a day on their phone (the worldwide average is four hours)
• PLOS [4]: The average consumer spends 5.05 hours a day on their phone
• dscout [5]: Phone screen time was 2.42 hours a day for the average user
• Tecmark [1]: consumers spend 3.27 hours a day on their phones over the course of a day

So, it seems like the global average may be 3–4 hours a day with the US consumer spending closer to 5 hours a day on their phone. That’s a quarter of our waking day!

Session length

dscout [5] reported that average session length is just under two minutes. This is in line with KPCB’s [6] average session length of exactly two minutes.

Mobile sessions are short! But you already knew that, right?

PLOS [4] provides more granular data on session length, reporting that 55% of sessions were less than 30s:

dscout [5] provides another perspective, reporting that more than half of the consumers’ sessions used no more than one app:

This finding is backed up by KPCB [6] who found that although the average consumer uses 12 apps daily, only 3 of a consumer’s apps account for 80%+ of their mobile usage in a single day. This reinforces the importance that Gateways now play in consumer browsing behaviour.

Start of the day

So, it seems like consumer are using their phone about 80 times a day for up to 2 minutes at a time. Before we look at what consumers are doing on their phone, let’s look at when they’re using their phones…

Pew [3] reported that 84.65% of consumers use their phone before 9am.

Deloitte [2] observed similar behaviour, reporting that 43 percent of respondents check their phones within 5 minutes of waking up:

According to Pew [3], the first things people do on their phone are:

1. Personal email: 39.95%
2. Facebook: 31.05%
3. Turning off alarm: 32.60%
4. Weather app: 21.40%

Deloitte’s [2] research tells a similar story, showing that 35% of consumer start by looking at texts and other instant messaging apps:

During the day

PLOS [4] found that consumers are most active on their phones in the afternoon but afternoon sessions are also the shortest. Mornings were the opposite: mornings contain the most infrequent but longest sessions. Evenings are somewhere in the middle:

A separate study was ran by the Android lock screen app, Locket. Although the data is a little old — from 2013 — it affirms that consumers spend more time on their phones in the evening than the afternoon:

“Users are most active between 5–8 p.m. ET, when over 75% of users are actively swiping [or tapping]. During peak hours the average user checks his or her phone nine times an hour.”

End of the day

Alright, we’ve looked at mornings, afternoons, and evenings. What about the night?

72.35% of consumers use their phone after 10pm. But don’t think people are putting their phones down until the morning… 47.90% of consumers reported using their phone ‘a lot’ or ‘sometimes’ when they wake up in the middle of the night.

This number is in line with Deloitte’s [2] findings that 50% of consumers use their phone in the middle of the night. That number increases to 77% for 25–34 year olds.

Tasks

So we know that most times consumers use their phone, they’re only using one or two apps. But what are those apps? What are consumers actually doing on their phones?

First let’s look at KPCB’s 2013 study, which includes all ‘checks’ (that’s sessions including when the consumer glances at their phone but doesn’t unlock it):

Messaging and conversation are clear leaders, but that was in 2013. Have things changed? Pew’s [3] study at the end of 2014 tells a similar tale:

Google’s [7] study compares these activities across different device types:

It’s worth nothing that Google’s report only looks at online activities, which is why it excludes text, IM, and video/voice calls.

dscout’s [5] report in 2016 dove further, breaking down consumers’ daily phone screen touches by app:

The top 20 apps, by share of touches (source: dscout [5])

This data suggests that nearly half of consumers’ screen touches are driven by apps owned by Facebook or Google.

With regards to ‘why’ consumers are going to these apps, 65.71% of consumers reported finding themselves using Facebook without thinking (Techmark [1]).

But, despite the popularity of social media, dscout’s [5] findings suggests messaging is the #1 reason consumers turn to their phones:

“Overall, nothing gets the fingers moving like communication, which outweighed information gathering. Messaging and social media apps totaled 26% and 22% of interactions respectively, while internet search browsers comprised 10%.”

Information gathering

Let’s take a look at that aforementioned information gathering behaviour displayed by consumers on mobile...

Mobile has created many new things for consumers to do that they never did on desktop. However, the diversity of tasks consumers now completed on phones is eating away at tasks previously completed on desktop:

Multitasking

Whilst mobile has previously been a device classification, mobile is becoming increasingly synonymous with a behaviour. Specifically, multi-tasking.

Clearly consumers like to use their phones while shopping and now the increasing popularity of mobile-based payments are creating even more opportunities for consumers to turn to their phones with 35% of 25–34 years old using their phone to make payments at least once a month [2].

Pew [3] also shows the extent to which consumers use their phones in different places. Noticeably, 82% of consumers use their phone in a car or on public transport:

Another stat that should be of no surprise to anyone is that 58.05% of consumers use their mobile phone in a restaurant. 89.45% of consumers notice others on their phone when they go to a restaurant. That suggests phone usage while dining is skewed towards some power users.

Watching TV is another popular activity for smartphone users, but what devices are consumers using to go online while watching TV? 68% of consumers use their phone while watching TV, compared to just 31% for desktop:

General sentiment

To conclude, perhaps one of the most revealing stats comes from Tecmark [1]: 78.85% of consumers said they feel lost without their mobile phone.

Finally, if there’s still any question as to how engrained mobile is in consumer’s every day lives, 64.52% of consumers say they use their phone more than their computer:

Cautions

Whilst the data collected in the studies I have sourced from seems indicative of the behaviours we observe every day, this data has its limitations:

• Most studies focussed on US and UK consumers.
• Most studies focussed on no more than a few thousand consumers, so the data comes from a small subset of consumers and may not be reflective of the population.
• Some data is self-reported by consumers, rather than measured by researchers running the tests.
• A lot of this research focussed only on smartphones and not other ‘mobile’ consumer technology like smartwatches.
• Consumer behaviour varies massively across studied demographic groups. This data shows averages. A good example of this is the data gather from two regions in the Tecmark [1] study: East Anglia ( a rural area) vs London (an urban area) where consumers in the countryside used their phones much less than the folks in the city. Age is also a big factor affecting consumer browsing behaviour.
• Pulling together multiple data sources, like I’ve done here, creates a certain level of noise and inference. The data is best understood within the context of how each study was conducted.

Sources

Unless referenced inline, these are the sources I pulled all data from:

1. Tecmark’s Smartphone Usage 2014 (2014)
2. Deloitte’s 2016 Global Mobile Consumer Survey: US Edition (2016)
3. The Pew Research Center’s US Smartphone use in 2015 (2015)
4. PLOS Journal’s Tools to Compare Estimated and Real-World Smartphone Use (2015)
5. DScout’s Putting a Finger on Our Phone Obsession (2016)
6. KPCB’s Internet Trends 2016 (2016)
7. Google’s Consumer Barometer (2016)