You probably aren’t going to ditch your phone during summer break

By Melissa Locker

May 25, 2018

Digital detoxes are all the rage—for the travel industry, anyway. Turns out the ditch-your-phone trend has not quite reached travelers yet. A new survey, says that Americans check their phones an average of 80 times a day while on vacation, with some checking their phone more than 300 times each day.

 

In a new poll of 2,000 U.S. travelers, more than half (53%) said they have never totally unplugged from their phones while on vacation, the New York Post reported. More than 20% of respondents said they checked their smartphones once per hour during their most recent vacations, while about 14% said they checked it twice per hour, in the survey from Asurion, a mobile device insurance company, and OnePoll, a U.K.-based marketing research company. Nearly 8% said they checked it more than 20 times per hour, which sounds reasonable for anyone who wants to look up the closest tiki bar, map out a route to said tiki bar, snap photo a photo of the coconut-rum tropical cocktail they ordered, and then call a Lyft to deposit them back to the hotel after two hours in a tiki bar. The poll also noted that 46% of people said they have switched off their phones at some point during vacations, but we’re guessing it was under duress from digital detox resorts, well-meaning researchers, and determined travel partners promoting digital detoxes.

As Skift points out, the travel industry is giving would-be travelers seriously mixed signals when it comes to phones, though—hotel rooms come equipped with free Wi-Fi, posting pics on Instagram can unlock freebies, and tweeting at airlines is frequently the only way to get answers. Instead of striving for the unrealistic bar of giving up your phone on vacation, try deleting these apps instead.

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