Are we addicted to smartphones?

I love Warsaw’s metro system. It’s only two lines but it serves me well: I use it almost on a daily basis, commuting to my office (and back home). Two months ago, an unusual idea struck me: why not use the time spent underground to carry out a little “sociological experiment”? Let’s check, I said to myself, how much are we addicted to smartphones.

My experiment's methodology was as simple as possible. Over the two last months I have been counting passengers, of those in my sight, at a given time, who glued themselves to the their iphones, lumias, samsungs etc. In order not to artificially bloat the statistics, I was using my beloved moleskine to take notes (proof on the picture).

Results? Well, on average, 31,04 per cent of Warsaw metro’s passengers wouldn’t bother to look around, gazing at small screens (to be exact: 231 out of 744 I had clearly in sight). In the morning, the proportion was slightly higher – 33,33 per cent (123 out of 369). In the evening – 28,18 per cent. Yet it was late in the evening (27/06/2016 at 23.15) when I recorded the highest result: out of 19 passengers I could see, 14 were glued to their phones (73,68 per cent). And it was in the morning (22/04/2016 at 9.15) when I recorded the lowest result, with only 3 passengers (out of the 31 I could see!) staring at phones.

Oh, and by the way: each time I counted smartphones, I noticed no more than 3 – 4 passengers reading paper books. Signum temporis.

Disclaimer: the following observations have no scientific value whatsoever. I’ve carried out this experiment just for the fun of it. Having said that, in my simplest-of-the-simple methodology, I tried to be as accurate as I could. Enjoy!