Chances are just mentioning this might make you want to take a glance, but a 2023 survey showed the average American checks their cellphone 144 times a day.
All that scrolling, clicking and purveying of cat videos comes at a cost, according to the poll from Reviews.org: We spend the equivalent of 65 days a year staring into that little glowing rectangle.
However, as bad as that is on its own, it’s even worse because we’re not letting a little thing like operating a moving vehicle stop us: An April 2024 survey from insurance carrier Nationwide shows 92% of Americans say cellphones have made driving more dangerous.
The poll of commercial drivers — that is people who drive for a living, like big rigs — showed one third of them admitting to feeling distracted while behind the wheel, and 60% of them say they’ve seen their colleagues hauling down the road while not keeping their eyes on it.
Fifty-five percent say they’re distracted by GPS/Nav systems, but the survey also showed 36% are also driving while sending or reading messages from work; 27% say they’re talking or texting on their phones, and 13% are checking their social media.
Even with this, eight in 10 say they’re safe drivers.
While all this distracted driving is undoubtedly dangerous, it shouldn’t come as a shock: More than half (56.9%) of the 1,000 respondents to the 2023 poll admitted they’re addicted to their phone.
Survey questions, methodology and results have not been verified or endorsed by ABC News or The Walt Disney Company.