18 hours ago
The average American scrolls 86 miles a year on their phones — these are the states going furthest
Gothamites go the distance — especially on their devices, per new data on the US hotspots that rack up the most scrolling mileage every 365 days.
'New York [has] an average daily screen time of 6 hours and 12 minutes, and annually scrolls 81.14 miles,' researchers for Toll Free Forwarding, a virtual phone system, told The Post.
But the long-haul isn't all that laudable.
3 A new report on states with the longest scrolling distances found that New Yorkers scroll for 81.14 miles per year.
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Instead, the experts warn that our high scrolling habits lead to low productivity, which they claim 'costs the global economy an estimated $8.8 trillion each year.'
With that kind of money on the line, there's really no justification for phoning it in while on the clock.
Still, most modernized folks find it hard to resist the distracting beeps, pings and dings of our electronics. The allure of those notifications, coupled with social media FOMO — a fear of missing out on titillating timeline trends on Instagram, X and TikTok — can hamper one's ability to focus on the everyday job demands.
It's a digital addition that plagues 9-to-5ers from coast-to-coast.
3 West coast and southern states made up the majority of US locations with the furthest scrolling distances.
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'The average American [spends] 6 hours and 35 minutes a day on screens, adding up to 2,403 hours annually,' study authors noted in the August report, revealing that we scroll an average of 86 miles per year.
'People check their devices an average of 58 times a day, with over half of those interruptions happening during work hours,' said the insiders, adding, 'half of those checks happen within just three minutes of the last, creating a nonstop loop of distraction.'
Constant task-switching can slash productivity by as much as 40%, say the analysts, who created a unique formula to determine just how far phone junkies are scrolling nationwide.
To calculate the lengths, investigators converted the average screen time in every state into seconds, then multiplied each figure by 6.3 (the length of an iPhone 16 Pro Screen) over 10 (the frequency of a scroll, in seconds), resulting in the distance traveled in inches per day.
The resulting figure was then divided by 12 to get the distance in feet per day. The figure was then divided by 5,280 to get the distance in miles per day, and then multiplied by 365 to get the final figure.
3 New York didn't make it onto the top 10 list of states with the greatest scrolling lengths.
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To much surprise, the Empire State isn't even in the top 10 ranking of states that thumb-browse the furthest lengths per year.
'Arizona tops the list with the highest average daily screen time in the country, an eye-opening 8 hours and 50 minutes per person each day,' wrote the specialists. 'Arizonans scroll an estimated 115.37 miles annually on their phones.'
Securing the second slot on the roster is Washington, amassing 108.18 scrolling miles, per year. Kentucky took third-place honors with thumbs traveling a whopping 105.18 every calendar-change.
'As phones continue to blur the line between work and distraction, the financial impact of screen time is becoming impossible to ignore,' alerted the authors.
Here's the top 10 states with the greatest scrolling times and lengths each year.
