Nearly half of U.S. adults tried to cut back on phone time last year, and most came up short

Forty-five percent of U.S. adults tried to cut back on their smartphone use in the past 12 months, according to a Pew Research Center survey of 9,750 adults conducted May 26 to June 1, 2026.

A quarter of them, 25%, say they were extremely or very successful at it. Another 52% managed somewhat, and 23% say they were not too or not at all successful.

Among adults who feel they spend too much time on their device, 62% say they have attempted to scale back. Their success rate is no better than anyone else's.

Just over half of U.S. adults, 53%, say they spend too much time on their smartphone, against about a third who say their use is about right and 3% who say they spend too little. Wanting the number down and getting it down turn out to be separate problems.

The struggle skews young

Roughly six in 10 adults under 50 say they have tried to cut back, compared with 39% of those 50 to 64 and 23% of adults 65 and older. Success barely moves by age, which means the extra effort buys younger adults almost nothing.

Seven in 10 adults under 30 say they spend too much time on their phone, as do 64% of those 30 to 49. That falls to 49% among adults 50 to 64 and 25% among those 65 and older.

About one in four adults, 26%, say they are on their smartphones “almost constantly,” and 60% say they use them several times a day. Among adults 18 to 29, 42% report almost-constant use, compared with 33% of those 30 to 49, 21% of those 50 to 64 and 9% of adults 65 and older.

Struggling to sleep

Smartphones hurt the amount of sleep they get, 41% of adults say, against 5% who say phones help. Nearly half say their phone makes no difference either way.

Among adults under 30, 62% say their smartphone costs them sleep, the only age group where a majority says so. About half of those 30 to 49 agree. Among adults 65 and older, it is 14%.

Phones fare better on everything else Pew asked about. Roughly three in four adults, 73%, say their device helps them stay informed and 51% say it helps them feel connected to others. Mood splits close to even, 22% hurts against 18% helps, with about half saying phones do neither. Productivity is the murkiest of the group: 34% say their phone hurts how productive they are and 30% say it helps.

Why the usual advice lands differently in medicine

Physicians spend at least 90 minutes a day on electronic health record (EHR) inbox tasks, plus nearly three more hours on weekends and holidays, the after-hours work known as pajama time. Academic primary care physicians averaged 6.0 hours of total EHR use and 2.9 hours outside scheduled patient hours for every eight scheduled hours, according to a cross-sectional study published in Applied Clinical Informatics.

Much of that arrives on the phone. Screen-time limits, grayscale displays, do-not-disturb windows and the rest of the standard toolkit assume the thing being silenced is optional.

Results, refill requests, portal messages and on-call traffic sit in the same notification tray as the group chat and the news alerts, and the settings do not distinguish between them.

Pew did not break its results out by occupation, so nothing here says physicians struggle more than anyone else.

It does suggest the half of American adults who want to be on their phones less are mostly failing at it, with a fully optional device. The version where the device is also the inbox is a harder version of the same problem.