Survey: 1 In 4 Adults Checks Phone Less Than A Minute After Waking Up
studyfinds.org
studyfinds.org
This narrative has bothered me since I was a teenager, though back then it was just "using the computer". I have always looked at these devices as multi-purpose tools. I did not want to "use the computer" -- I wanted to play a game. Or learn how to code. Or create music. Or read news. Or talk to my friends. Or watch a movie. The device is merely a means to an end, not the goal itself.
In other words, I was not interested in coding because it meant using a computer, I was interested in coding because you can build things and solve problems in interesting and mentally stimulating ways. I enjoy messing around with electronics and working on my house for the same reasons -- not because I was looking for an excuse to use a soldering iron or circular saw.
To lump these activities together makes no sense. They happen to use the same device, but that's it. I wake up and turn off the alarm on my phone. Once I actually get out of bed, I'll also notice if there are any texts -- it rarely happens but if someone texts me really early in the morning or overnight, it's probably something really important. What I don't do is check work e-mails or social media. There's usually some notification sitting there for that, but there pretty much always is, and it's easy to just ignore.
Whether for good or bad, the existence of phones has changed the human condition. Perhaps irreversibly. It's not just how we consume news or work. It's a very personal change. Remember in the nineties how we'd all have to plan ahead of time to meet up with friends or family or go on a date or whatever? You had to wait until evening, call when they would be home or leave a message, set up a time and place, and stick to it because once you left the house you couldn't coordinate further.
So whether or not that's good or bad is beside the point. It is a profoundly different method of socializing. Communication was sparse and delayed and you couldn't change plans or cancel 30 minutes ahead of time without looking like a dick. We are different for this. In some ways good, in some ways bad, but we have such a poor understanding of how it's working for us in the greater scheme of things that this fact alone should be somewhat alarming. And no, you can't just choose not to participate. Not having a smartphone on your person at all times and being always connected, always reachable, and always able to be obliged to work or respond or go do something at another's command is now tantamount to not participating in society.
Before this existed, we did a lot of the same activities in other ways as you said, but the restrictions of the medium we had available truly did change how it all worked in a tangible way. Yes, a similar thing happened with radio and land lines and other forms of technology before, but the extent of the change was lesser. The developments of the past ten or twenty years are so much more efficient and powerful and difficult to evade that they deserve unique consideration.
[0] it's a little different in that whether there is or isn't inherently a problem still isn't exactly settled science
Don't be. Hell I can "function" with my shoes tied together.
I can "function" with some marijuana and some whiskey in my system.
I can "function" on 4 hours of sleep. It's an awful day and I'm more rude and impatient, but if I did it for years I'd be telling people I can fully function on 4 hours with no negative side effects.
Now notice that the current US President has been severely sleep deprived every day for decades.
I have to carry my phone with me anyway, so why should I have a watch?
i was also watch hater but it's very light, you when forget it's on hand absolutely not comparable to my father's Garmin fenix brick with battery life few hours
And I don't time it, it's on all night.
I travel a lot, often to different time zones, and instead of having muck around with hotel alarm clocks, my phone alarm always goes off at the same time every morning relative to the local time.
And there's no alarm clock at home that buzzes in the morning and annoys the heck out of my neighbors before shutting itself off after 30 mins.
A phone also doesn't blink 00:00 when the power goes out.
But the most effective alarm clock I own is a good old-fashion quartz clock AM/FM radio. It's WAY louder than any phone or tablet can offer up, and having it is often more reliable as well, given that my phone sometimes needs a hard reboot after installing a security update and hence isn't booted when I wake up, or didn't align for charging correctly and ran out of battery while sitting on the charging pad.
On the other hand, the battery in the Xoom mitigates the risk of my alarm not going off due to a power outage, and it being smart mitigates the risk of being late due to a time change.
Mine predates the recession, and I still rely on it. I have it on my dresser, such that I need to stand up and get out of bed to turn it off. Hey, while I'm up, let's start the day.
Tho with VoD dominating all entertainment, what are kids doing nowadays when waking up early at a Saturday?
In any case, everybody has different circumstances. Parenting is an improvisational pursuit, every kid has different needs. In my kid's case, end-of-semester sleep deprivation has more than typical impact because of hypothyroidism that requires carefully adjusted medication and really benefits from a regular sleep schedule. Engineering school? Regular sleep schedule? Pffft. So I cut some slack. Their tendency to over-sleep alarms is partly wonky body chemistry.
I recall oversleeping for a final. Luckily, it was an intro programming, you-mean-I-can't-test-out-of-this?? class. I walked in a hour late, and left a 1/2 hour early. Had that been DiffEQ or similar.... errrf.
I set two alarms: 5 and 6. If I make my first alarm, I get an hour to myself. If I don't, I scramble to get ready before my kids wake up.
Since moving my phone, I have slept better (no more late night time wasting in bed) and I have gotten up at 5 more reliably. I'm not really a morning person, but I enjoy the morning schedule better than my previous "schedule" (kids wake me up by screaming).
Though, like everything these days, I heard there is an app for that. Swipe to snooze. Calculate some math problem and enter the answer for alarm off. Haven't bought the app myself yet.
Honestly though, I'm still shocked at the number of people who are on a screen that soon. That can't be healthy for the eyes.
An answer like "for some reason manufacturers only use garishly bright LEDs" is (too) true, but not really about it being digital (c'mon eink!), while answer like "I find analog clocks to be prettier/more elegant" can be true but is clearly subjective.
I've just never understood the desire to have a clock that doesn't tell the time but instead shows some foreign representation of the common understanding of time (and not too precisely at that). That doesn't mean there is no argument I'd find persuasive, I've just not heard it yet. Care to share?
It's probably just how I was brought up.
Thanks for the answer!
Since starting the day with an out-of-battery phone isn't very pleasant, it's been very effective at preventing phone use before bed. It still works fine for alarms, or, if I'm on call, pages.
Do people just sit there and stare at the ceiling or what?
I've noticed the tendency to check my phone/computer when I wake up, and I consciously try to avoid it. Checking within a minute really a sign of addiction, just like people who smoke a cigarette in bed after waking (and yes I knew somebody who did this.)
I definitely don't check my phone/computer within a minute of waking up. Probably 10 or 15 minutes on a good day, 3-5 minutes on a bad day.
Yea, that means I sometimes doze a bit sitting on the john. It does mean I'm at the point where I'm ready to do something productive in ten minutes after getting out of bed, though.
I should be working on a CSS grid layout I've been fighting with all week but instead I'm checking comments on HN. Fortunately I've gone from doing it four times a day to about two - in both cases, while im eating - but nobody needs to be "informed" every single day. You'll pick up the stuff that really matters even if you wade out of the stream for a while.
People even had radios and sometimes televisions in the bathroom to listen to this while they showered.
The question of what constitutes "checking" your phone is probably ambiguous.
The only trouble is that I've only been able to abide by this rule 75% or so of the time --- it's easy to make an exception because I want to just finish this one testcase or something, and then I end up staying up much later than I intended and wasting time on bullshit in the morning. These brain extension devices are sticky.
Not that I'm complaining about this, it just is what it is.
(Also because there's a sports radio show that isn't broadcast nationally from my hometown and I like to listen in as I'm waking up/getting ready for the day)
Today the alarm clock is set to buzz. I (literally) roll out of bed onto the floor and check the Washington Post app. To make sure the world hasn't blown up while I was asleep.
Is there a significant difference here?
I should also note I easily spend 5 days in the wilderness with no phone connection at all.
My phone provides important information that will shape my day. I'm wholly shame free about how I use it.
Not that the alarm wakes me up very often. I almost always wake up a few minutes before it goes off. Even in different time zones. Not sure how my body does that. So technically I probably don't check it less than a minute after waking up, just a few seconds after the alarm goes off.
That said, I'm usually checking my main desktop computer and IRC within a minute of waking up.
If you can figure out the C=64 reset system call, you can figure out an alarm clock.
The indented button is on every alarm clock to prevent you pressing it accidentally. Google some early 80s alarm clocks to see examples.
So it's the other half that have applied to go to Mars right?
knowing this kind of thing can be useful for various technical reasons even product management could benefit from this kind of information.
I guess my key takeaway is it's a good reminder that painfully obvious information when presented with numbers can still be kind of interesting
So of course they are going to look at their phones.
I hope the statistic is completely wrong because otherwise there seem to be a ton of people who don't know how to use a phone properly.
This is just to offend those who do check their phone (which is also their alarm) when they wake up (which generates clicks), and to make those who don't check their phone when they wake up feel superior (which generates clicks).