96 Times a Day 12.5.21
What does the average American do 96 times a day? Any guesses? It’s not breathing since we do that almost 22,000 times a day. It’s not blinking either as it’s reported we blink more than 19,000 times a day. It might surprise you but it’s the number of times a day that the average person checks their phone. Really! That amounts to once every 10 minutes.
Texting is so common among all age groups now it’s said that senior adults are seven times more likely to text than talk in person and twice as likely to text as to dial a phone number. It’s not just the frequency that is noteworthy, but as James Emery White points out, it’s also the setting. The issue isn’t checking our phones to communicate or to access information, but it’s that we seem to have an inability to stop checking them even when engaged in conversation with another person. We check them in a room during a social setting and sometimes with our family at the evening dinner table.
I want to challenge all of us to make a conscious vow to go through the day and intentionally attempt the discipline of not checking our phones during these three settings.
- When you are in a one-to-one conversation with another person.
- When you are in a meeting or group setting.
- When you are with your family for any meal or outing.
Try it for a day. I know you’ll end up checking your phone a lot less but you’ll also end up connecting with people a lot more. And connecting with others, in authentic community, is one of our values here at Wenatchee First Assembly.