do we use smartphones, or do they use us?

The poster visualisations are based on international and regional datasets, including PISA 2022, youth media use studies, and smartphone usage statistics. One central finding shows that 43.8% of 15-year-old students report more than 60 hours of digital device use per week, divided almost equally between learning-related activities and leisure. While international health organisations such as the World Health Organization provide strict screen-time recommendations for young children, no fixed limits exist for adolescents. Instead, current guidelines emphasise context, content, and balance over duration alone.

The poster situates smartphone use within broader societal developments: the rapid adoption of smartphones since 2007, the rise of social media platforms, and the growing role of digital environments in everyday life. By linking time use, app preferences, and societal regulation, the poster highlights the ambivalence of smartphones as tools that enable participation and efficiency while also demanding constant attention. This tension underscores the importance of media and digital literacy, increasingly recognised as a foundational skill for navigating an always-online world.

To translate abstract data into lived experience, the project incorporates two abacus-based physical data visualisations. The first abacus represents time use across a year: each coin corresponds to one week and is distributed across screen time, sleep, and leisure. This physicalisation makes visible how digital device use occupies a substantial share of annual time, encouraging reflection on balance rather than isolated daily figures.

The second abacus is interactive and participatory. Visitors are invited to place coins according to where they personally use digital devices most, such as listening to music, navigating, communicating, taking photos, or checking the weather and news. Through interaction, individual routines accumulate into a collective pattern, revealing common practices and differences in everyday smartphone use.

Together, the data visualisation and physicalisation aim not to judge behaviour, but to foster awareness and agency. By making digital device use visible, tangible, and discussable, the project invites reflection on how smartphones shape everyday life, and how conscious use can be negotiated in an increasingly digital society.

OECD (2023) How’s Life for Children in the Digital Age? PISA 2022 Results. Paris: OECD Publishing.

ASTAT – Landesinstitut für Statistik Südtirol (2022) Mediennutzung in Südtirol. Bozen: ASTAT.

Patil, S. (2024) Teen Smartphone Usage and Addiction. Kaggle Dataset. Available at: https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/sumedpatil/teen-smartphone-usage-and-addiction (Accessed: 02.02.2026).

Common Sense Media (2019) The Common Sense Census: Media Use by Tweens and Teens. San Francisco: Common Sense Media.

KhushiKyad001 (2025) Global Mobile Phone Addiction Dataset. Kaggle Dataset. Available at: https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/khushikyad001/global-mobile-phone-addiction-dataset (last accessed: 02.02.2026).