No Phone for a Year?

“Imagine what we could do with our money, and hours, if we set our phones aside for a year,” begins a provocative article in the New York Times. Author Paul Greenberg speculates about the kinds of things Americans could do with the $1,380 a year and 1,460 hours spent on average on smartphones.

Here’s one example:

“In most Western states, that $1,380 you spent on your phone could buy half an acre of land. In the right conditions, that half acre could easily accommodate 150 trees. A single tree sequesters 48 pounds of carbon a year. It takes about 30 minutes for an amateur forester to plant a tree. If every American smartphone owner used that time and money to plant half an acre of trees, we would sequester about 886 million tons of carbon a year, enough to offset more than 10 percent of the country’s annual emissions.” 

Source: “In Search of Lost Screen Time,” by Paul Greenberg, The New York Times, December 31, 2018

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