Britons check mobiles 1.1bn times a day, Deloitte survey finds

How many times have you looked at your phone today? According to a recent survey it's been revealed that Britons collectively check their mobiles up to 1.1 billion times a day.

This news may either fill you with worry or, more likely, relief in the knowledge you're not alone in relentlessly glancing at your gadget. The findings from Deloitte found over a third of smartphone owners check their mobile more than 25 times a day while a sixth of owners over 50 times a day. The survey also found that one in ten will immediately reach for their phone the moment they wake up, 28% of us will be glued to our devices before bed and a third of us use them while eating at a restaurant.

Considering how much we can do with our mobiles there is little wonder why we are constantly scanning our devices. Whether it is communicating, gaming, ordering a pizza or finding directions they have become an integral part of our day-to-day activities. Then there is social media, FOMO (fear of missing out) and the newly-coined nomophobia (no-mobile-phone phobia) where people become restless and anxious without their phones. It has reached such a state in the US that there are rehabilitation centres to help sufferers overcome mobile addiction.

Further mobile analytics from Flurry have revealed most of phone users' time is spent on messaging and social media which consumes on average 68 minutes of our time per day.

An upside to all this checking means that if you were to measure it on a cost-per-look basis it will make an expensive handset an absolute bargain. Deloitte's head of technology, Paul lee explains: "The frequency of consumers glancing at their smartphones arguably makes it one of the best value devices available."

"For the sixth of smartphone owners who look at their devices 50 times or more a day, the cost per glance is less than two pence a day for a £700 handset kept for two years. And that's before allowing for trade-in value."