The average American clicks, taps or swipes on their smartphone screen more than 2,600 times a day, with some reaching an astonishing 5,400 times.
The shocking statistic is just the latest in a series of growing statistics highlighting our addiction with phones, and comes as Apple is under increasing pressure to take measures to curb iPhone addiction among children.
But the answer could be as simple as cutting our color, one expert has claimed.
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By setting the screen of your handset to grayscale, users might feel checking the device is less appealing – this is because some of the colors, like red and bright blue, subconsciously make us excited to reach for our phones
Tristan Harris, a former design ethicist at Google, says that by setting the screen of your handset to grayscale, users might not be so compelled to check their device.
This is, he says, because certain colors used by apps, like red and bright blue, subconsciously make us excited to reach for our phones.
Harris, who was once a phone addict himself, had claimed he beat the habit by switching his colorful iPhone display to grayscale, as the dark shades made checking Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and other social media sites less appealing.
With a background in psychology, he understood that certain apps could ‘trigger [a]whole set of sensations and thoughts,’ he told The Atlantic last year.
Harris aimed to make his phone look minimalist and pulled inspiration from a Google experiment that curbed employees M&M snacking in the office by ‘moving the candy from clear to opaque containers’ – and he did the same by covering the apps in a shroud of gray.
Thomas Z. Ramsoy, the chief executive of Neurons, a four-year-old company based in Copenhagen which uses brain scans and eye tracking technology to study apps, updates and future technology says the idea could work – but says users need to switch off their sound as well.
‘It’s a very good idea,’ he told the New York Times.
‘You have to take away the sound as well.’
By seeing nothing but gray could be a quick trick to leaving your phone on the table instead, as certain colors can evoke emotions – and it seems Silicon Valley knows how to use them.
For example, red creates excitement, appears youthful and bold, which is the color chosen for notifications, and yellow is found to make us happy and optimistic – Snapchat’s iconic logo is yellow.
Then there is blue, a color used by Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other sites.
This color makes things appear trustworthy, dependable and professional.
And other than evoking emotions, research has shown that blue is the world’s most popular color.

By seeing nothing but gray could be a quick trick to leaving your phone on the table instead, as certain colors can evoke emotions – and it seems Silicon Valley knows how to use them
Harris recently gave an interview on CBS This Morning Show about how Silicon Valley hooks users to their phones with a reward system.
‘Phones are like a slot machine, as it operates on a reward system,’ Harris said in the interview
‘Sometimes you’re checking your phone, and you’re playing a slot machine, and you get a message from the person you love or an email to show up on the CBS This Morning Show it feels really good.’
‘Then sometimes you check your phone and there’s nothing there and the fact you sometimes get something and sometimes you don’t, is what makes it just like a slot machine.’
‘It’s not necessarily bad, but do you want your phone to feel like a slot machine?’
‘The main narrative to correct is that we have this belief that technology is neutral and it is always up to us to choose what we post on Facebook or how we use Snapchat or what we use our phone for.’
‘What this misses is that there is an attention economy where companies need to maximize how much attention they are getting from you.
‘And there is a whole playbook of techniques to do so and a slot machine is one thing you can sprinkle on a product in order to get people to use it’.