The Effect of Smartphones on Attention Span

The average user is on his or her phone for two and a half hours over 76 sessions./nThis is across the board for all smartphone users./nIf you did the data and you just do millennials on iPhones, it's five and a half hours a day over twice the time./nHarris points out that slot machines, this is a weird factoid, make more money than the entire film industry and baseball together./nThe reason, which is how weird is that? Because one, it's addictive. Once you start, you can't stop. Two, it's small amounts of money. It's like a quarter here, a buck there, five bucks./nWhy are you at the airport in Reno or whatever? I don't know. Just a long time ago. I remember I was there and there was a slot machine. I was like 12. I did not do anything. But whatever./nYou think, oh, it's just a buck here. It's just five bucks there. It's just a few quarters there. And all of the sudden, all of your money is gone./nAnd Harris just makes the point that in the same way we lose so much time in the black hole of the device. It's not just time. Some of us have time to burn. I don't. Most of us do. But far more importantly, we lose our capacity to pay attention.