Man Who Invented Mobile Phone Says People Need To 'Get A Life'

People who use their phones excessively may want to reevaluate their priorities, according to the mobile phone's inventor.

American engineer Martin Cooper, 93, was speaking on BBC Breakfast when he advised viewers to "get a life" and stop scrolling.

Cooper oversaw the Motorola team that was in charge of creating the first mobile phone in the 1970s. He was the first person in history to use a portable mobile phone in public in 1973.

The man who is now generally recognized as the "father of the cell phone" revealed he doesn't use it all that much.

In the course of the discussion, Mr. Cooper revealed that he probably only uses his phone for less than 5% of the time.

He was surprised when asked what he would say to folks who spend more than five hours on theirs.

#3

‘You spend five hours a day?’ he asked. ‘I would say “get a life!”.’

Phones are in most cases for communicating with loved ones, doomscrolling Twitter, and finding infinite TikTok videos to watch.

Having said that, you might still be shocked to find that we will spend almost a decade of our lives on our phones.

WhistleOut surveyed 1,000 American smartphone users to see how much time we spend on our devices. The results are shocking.

According to the survey, millennials (those born between 1981 and 1996) spend over a quarter of their waking hours—or 23.1 percent of each day—on their phones.

The percentage falls to 16.5% for Generation X (born 1965–1980), and it is even lower for Baby Boomers (born 1946–1964), who scroll for only 9.9% of their waking hours.

Researchers in the study also determined how long we spend on our phones on average each day, which differed greatly among generations.

The average daily screen time for millennials is 3.7 hours, Gen X spends 3 hours, and boomers spend 2.5 hours on average.

By adding together the data, WhistleOut was able to determine that the typical phone user will spend 8.74 years using their phone during their lifetime.

However, they clarify that a large portion of phone usage is due to the tech-focused employment that millennials, who were among the first to grow up with this technology, are in.

However, there are a lot of ways you may try to cut back on your own screen time if you wish to heed Mr. Cooper's suggestion and put the phone down.