A Fascinating Tabulation of the Lack of Smartphone Usage Depicted in the Highest Grossing Movies of 2018

In a technological episode of The Nerdwriter, video blogger and web producer Evan Puschak posits a valid question – “Why Are There So Few Smartphones In Popular Movies?“. He then puts a finer point on his question by tabulating how many characters in the highest grossing films of 2018 used a smartphone and how they used it.

Smartphones in Movies

Puschak eventually comes to the conclusion that going to the movies is a form of escapism and perhaps one of the things we are escaping is our phones.

Though there are smartphones in some of these movies, their combined total run time comes out to about a minute, if that. …but our most popular movies have never really been about confronting our fears, they’re about escaping for a couple of hours after a hard week and in that spirit, I think you can say that smartphones may play a big role in our lives, maybe even more than we’d care to admit, but they barely have any part in our biggest movies.

Lori Dorn
Lori Dorn

Lori is a Laughing Squid Contributing Editor based in New York City who has been writing blog posts for over a decade. She also enjoys making jewelry, playing guitar, taking photos and mixing craft cocktails.

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