54.5% Look at Their Phone While Commuting: Reading a 200-Person Survey Properly
In a survey of commuters in Japan, looking at a phone was the top answer at 54.5%, with news at 42.5% and social at 40%. Here is how far a sample of 200 can be pushed, and how to translate it into your own commute.
When commuting and phones come up, one figure gets quoted on its own: 54.5%. It comes from a survey of 200 people in Japan, and parts of it travel well while other parts mean nothing until you translate them into your own commute. Let’s open it up and see what the number can actually carry.
What the survey asked
Shingen, a Japanese company that runs the consumer media site SHUFUFU, surveyed 200 adults in Japan who take a train or bus to work (“Survey on smartphone use while commuting”, fielded online in May 2024 as the company’s own research). The sample breaks down like this:
| Field | Breakdown |
|---|---|
| Gender | 85 men / 115 women |
| Age | 34 in their 20s / 64 in their 30s / 64 in their 40s / 38 aged 50+ |
| Who qualified | People who commute by train or bus |
Three results carry the story. Asked what they mainly do while commuting, the top answer was “looking at my phone” at 54.5%, followed by “looking out the window or at my surroundings” at 17.5%. Asked what they do on the phone — multiple answers allowed — reading news came first at 42.5% and browsing or posting on social came second at 40%. Everything below second place appears only in a chart image in the release, so those figures aren’t public.
Look at commute length before you look at 54.5%
The number worth reading first isn’t the headline — it’s how long these people travel. The most common answer was 30 minutes to an hour (46.5%), then 15 to 30 minutes (30.5%), then one to one and a half hours (12.5%). Anything over an hour was a small minority.
So the picture this survey paints is a commute of roughly half an hour each way. For someone travelling 15 minutes it overstates things; for someone travelling 90 minutes it understates them badly. The further your own trip sits from the middle of that distribution, the more you should work from your own round-trip minutes rather than from anyone’s percentage.
54.5% and 42.5% don’t sit on the same base
The common misreading is to line these two up as if they measured the same thing. The 54.5% answers “what do you mainly do while commuting” — one choice only. The 42.5% and 40% answer “what do you do on your phone” with multiple selections, so one person can be counted in both. You can’t add them together, and you can’t rank them against each other.
What the survey supports is this: a little over half of commuting attention goes to the phone, and within that, news and social are close to level at the top. Writing it as “42.5% of commuters read the news” silently swaps the base. For how to line up figures from surveys that measured different populations, see how much screen time is average.
How much weight will a sample of 200 hold?
Whole-sample figures like 54.5% and 42.5% are usable as a rough guide at n=200. The breakdowns are where it falls apart. Each age bucket here holds only 34 to 64 people, so any claim of the form “people in their 20s do X” moves substantially on a handful of responses. The work was also the company’s own research rather than a third-party institute, and the figures below second place were never published.
- Usable: the overall ordering — phone first, news and social at the top of what’s on it
- Handle carefully: splits by age or gender, where one cell is a few dozen people
- Not usable: specific percentages below second place, which aren’t published
The same kind of close read of a 10,000-person survey is in what people say they overuse.
Stack it against a different survey and you get a sense of scale. Job Soken, the research arm of Persol Career, surveyed 606 working adults in Japan (“2024 Survey on Smartphone Reliance”, fielded online 6–11 November 2024). Among the 450 who said they rely on their phone, average daily use came to 264.7 minutes while the amount they felt they could live with was 197.2 minutes — a gap of 67.5 minutes. A half-hour commute each way is 60 minutes round trip, which is almost exactly the size of that gap. That is the part of the day the survey is really describing.
Translate it into one decision
Having read the survey, there is one thing to decide: which direction of your commute you’re going to change.
| Each way | What the survey implies for you | What to decide |
|---|---|---|
| Around 15 min | Shorter than the survey’s centre; it’s about how often you open, not how long | Pick what you’ll open before you board, not after |
| 30–60 min | The survey’s centre; news and social fill it by default | Change the content of one direction only, not both |
| Over 1 hour | A minority in this survey; two-plus hours a day | Give each direction a separate job, with one fixed on audio or reading |
- Write down your one-way trip in minutes and find your row above
- Add up the round trip — that total is the most you could ever reclaim
- Pick one direction, outbound or homeward, to change
- Review only that direction after a week
The practical playbook for doing it is in reclaiming your commute. A survey’s job ends once you’ve translated it back into your own minutes.
Sources
- Shingen Inc., “Survey on smartphone use while commuting” (200 adults in Japan who commute by train or bus — 85 men, 115 women; 34 in their 20s, 64 in their 30s, 64 in their 40s, 38 aged 50+; fielded online May 2024 as the company’s own research. Commute length: 30–60 min 46.5%, 15–30 min 30.5%, 1–1.5 h 12.5%. Main activity: phone 54.5%, looking around 17.5%. Phone use, multiple answers: news 42.5%, social 40%. Figures below second place appear only in chart images). Japanese-language release: https://prtimes.jp/main/html/rd/p/000000120.000135215.html
- Job Soken (Persol Career), “2024 Survey on Smartphone Reliance”, 606 working adults in Japan, fielded online 6–11 November 2024 (264.7 minutes average and 197.2 minutes tolerable were asked of the 450 who said they rely on their phone). Japanese-language release: https://prtimes.jp/main/html/rd/p/000000227.000013597.html
This article summarizes published survey findings. It is not medical advice or a diagnosis.
FAQ
- How many people look at their phone while commuting?
- In a survey of 200 train and bus commuters in Japan by Shingen (May 2024), 54.5% said looking at their phone was the main thing they do while commuting. Asked what they do on the phone, with multiple answers allowed, reading news (42.5%) and social media (40%) came out on top.
- Can I say 42.5% of commuters read the news on their phones?
- No. The 54.5% answers a single-choice question about what people mainly do while commuting; the 42.5% and 40% come from a multiple-choice question about what they do on the phone, so the bases differ. The survey supports saying that a little over half of commuting attention goes to the phone, with news and social close to level at the top.
- How much weight can a 200-person survey carry?
- The overall ordering is usable as a rough guide. Splits by age or gender, where one cell is a few dozen people, need careful handling, and percentages below second place were never published. For your own commute, work from your own round-trip minutes rather than the percentage.
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