Half of Americans say they spend too much time on their smartphone

Americans built a machine capable of placing nearly the whole of human knowledge in the palm of a hand. Then, between scrolling, notifications, and messages, they apparently became unable to put their smartphones down

Just over half of U.S. adults now acknowledge that they spend too much time on their smartphones, according to a Pew Research Center survey that paints an unsettling portrait of a nation tethered to glowing screens, incessant notifications, algorithmic feeds and devices designed to demand attention from morning until bedtime.

Younger adults stand out for describing their smartphone use as excessive. Seven-in-ten adults under 30 say they spend too much time on it, as do about two-thirds of those ages 30 to 49. Roughly half of those ages 50 to 64 and a quarter of those 65 and older say the same.

Pew Research Center surveyed 9,750 U.S. adults from May 26 to June 1, 2026. Everyone who took part in this survey is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel. The survey represents the views of the full U.S. adult population.

About one-third say the amount of time they spend on their phones is about right. Just 3% say they spend too little time using them.

The numbers become considerably more alarming among younger Americans.

Seven in 10 adults under 30 say they spend too much time on their smartphones. About two-thirds of people ages 30 to 49 say the same, compared with roughly half of adults ages 50 to 64 and one-quarter of those 65 and older.

It amounts to a remarkable collective confession: The technology that promised to liberate people from desks and put information at their fingertips has become, for millions of Americans, something they themselves believe is consuming too much of their lives.

And many appear unable to escape it.

Pew found that 45% of U.S. adults tried during the previous year to reduce the amount of time they spent on their smartphones. An almost identical 46% said they had not tried. Among people who already believe they use their phones too much, 62% said they attempted to cut back.

The success rate was hardly reassuring.

Among Americans who tried to reduce their smartphone use, only one-quarter described themselves as extremely or very successful. Another 52% said they were somewhat successful, while 23% conceded that they were not too successful or not successful at all.

In other words, millions of Americans recognize that they are spending too much of their finite lives staring into a small electronic rectangle, try to stop doing it — and discover that putting the thing down is harder than they expected.

‘Almost constantly’

The smartphone has become so thoroughly embedded in American existence that using one occasionally is increasingly an anomaly.

About one-quarter of adults told Pew that they use their smartphones “almost constantly.” Another 60% use them several times a day. Among adults younger than 30, 42% say they are on their smartphones almost constantly.

One-third of adults ages 30 to 49 say the same. Even among people ages 50 to 64, 21% describe their smartphone use as nearly constant. The figure drops to 9% among Americans 65 and older.

Those numbers describe something considerably larger than a change in communications technology.

Within little more than a generation, smartphones have insinuated themselves into virtually every corner of daily life: conversations, meals, work, shopping, entertainment, dating, navigation, photography, banking, news consumption and the quiet minutes that people once spent thinking, observing their surroundings or simply doing nothing.

The Pew survey does not diagnose addiction, nor does it establish that smartphone use is inherently harmful. Smartphones provide obvious benefits, and Americans readily acknowledge them.

Roughly three-quarters say their smartphones help them stay informed, while about half say the devices help them feel connected with other people.

But those benefits come with a darker side.

The most obvious casualty is sleep.

Forty-one percent of Americans say their smartphones hurt the amount of sleep they get, compared with only 5% who say the devices improve their sleep. Nearly half report no effect.

Again, younger Americans bear the greatest burden.

A staggering 62% of adults under 30 say smartphone use hurts their sleep. About half of adults ages 30 to 49 say the same. Younger adults are also the age group most likely to report that smartphones hurt their productivity, while adults under 50 are more likely than older Americans to say the devices damage their mood.

An economy built to capture attention

Those findings should make it increasingly difficult to dismiss excessive smartphone use as merely a matter of weak individual self-control.

The modern smartphone is the delivery mechanism for a vast commercial attention economy in which some of the world’s largest technology companies compete for minutes and seconds of human awareness.

Every additional swipe, click, notification, video and refresh can become another opportunity to display advertising, collect behavioral information, recommend content or keep a consumer inside a platform.

That business model creates an obvious tension between what users say they want and what technology companies often want from them.

A person may want to spend less time staring at a phone. A platform generally has little economic incentive to celebrate when that person closes the application.

The result is a technological environment filled with mechanisms intended to encourage continued engagement: push notifications, endless scrolling, autoplaying videos, algorithmically selected recommendations, social feedback and an effectively bottomless supply of new material.

The Pew survey did not examine whether particular companies or design features cause excessive smartphone use, so its findings cannot establish that those mechanisms are responsible for Americans’ inability to cut back.

What the survey does establish is extraordinary enough.

Millions of people think they are spending too much time using smartphones. Millions have attempted to reduce that time. Many say they have achieved only limited success. And an enormous proportion of younger adults say their phones are interfering with one of the most elementary requirements of human health: sleep.

The disappearing idle moment

The consequences may extend beyond the number of hours recorded by a screen-time application.

The smartphone has colonized something civilization once possessed in abundance: the unoccupied moment.

Waiting for a bus, standing in line, sitting alone in a restaurant, riding an elevator or spending five minutes before an appointment once meant having little choice but to observe, think, daydream, talk to another person or endure boredom.

Now there is a machine in nearly every pocket offering an instantaneous escape from silence.

That transformation is difficult to quantify, and Pew’s research does not attempt to measure its broader cultural consequences. But its survey captures the public’s growing uneasiness with the bargain.

The people expressing that concern are not Luddites rejecting modern technology. They are smartphone users describing their own behavior.

Nearly half have already tried to cut back.

One-quarter of those who tried say they were highly successful.

Nearly one-quarter of American adults say they are using their phones almost constantly.

And 70% of adults younger than 30 say they are spending too much time doing it.

The smartphone was sold as a tool that would give people greater control over their lives.

For a remarkable share of Americans, the question raised by Pew’s findings is whether that relationship has been reversed.

Americans own their smartphones.

Increasingly, they seem to wonder whether their smartphones own them.