Smartphones checked 85 times a day, study shows

People check their smartphones an average 85 times a day without even knowing they are doing it, a study suggests.

The average person uses their device for five hours a day – about a third of the time they are awake, Nottingham Trent University found. The study, which involved a number of universities, asked 23 participants aged 18 to 33 to estimate the amount of time they spend on their phone and compared it with their actual usage.

An app was installed on their smartphones which recorded their usage over a two-week period. The work, published in the journal Plos One, found people were accessing their phones twice as often as they thought.