5:17
About the Project
Our phones are killing us, which is to say that we are killing ourselves with our phones. We know it. We are ashamed of it. We try to hide it. We judge and shame others for it. We vilify tech companies for their role in it. And yet each day we make the decision to engage in this act of social and personal suicide.
In America, on average, we check our phones 186 times a day, and spend 5 hours and 17 minutes looking at them. The effects of phone time at such extreme levels are the subject of much academic study and commentary. That work is important and worthy of consideration. It draws on large sample sets and long times lines to define more precisely what is happening, whom is being harmed, how, and to what extent. But at a core level we already know everything we need to know. It is bad for us. We see it. We feel it. In others. In ourselves. It hardly seems a coincidence that the generalized disintegration of civic discourse and shared culture that are the hallmarks of our current age correlate quite exactly with the proliferation of smart phones and social media, all now supercharged by emergent AI.
5:17 embodies and bears witness to the full scale of this life negating pathology.
Every night for 3 weeks, beginning on January 21, 2026 a volunteer - called a scroller - will sit alone in the gallery space at 2413 Hyperion and continuously look at their phone for 5 hours and 17 minutes. Scrollers will be visible inside the space to the heavy car and pedestrian traffic on Hyperion Avenue. But there will be no visitors inside the space, no interactions through the glass, no interactions of any kind. The experience will be a hermetic exhibition of the precise extent of our voluntary daily surrender.
Scrollers will record how they are feeling periodically throughout the experience. The resulting data will be compiled and displayed at the closing event, and on our website. Scrollers will also be filmed from multiple angles, and a compilation of all 2 scrollers' sessions will be edited together into a real time 105 hour and 40 minute film, which will be streamed from the website and elsewhere.
There will be a reception at the gallery on February 11, 2026 from 7-9pm, featuring a review of the data gathered from scrollers, excerpts from the filming, and a moderated discussion. All are welcome.
Some Phone Facts
5 hours and 17 minutes of phone time per day equates to 83 days per year, and 11.5 years over an average lifetime.
87% of Americans look at their phones while watching TV. 85% look at their phones within 10 minutes of waking up in the morning, and 43% within 10 minutes of falling asleep at night. 68% use their phones while sitting on the toilet, 61% have texted someone in the same room, and 53% have never spent an entire day without their phone. 41% feel panic if their battery drops below 20%.
46% of Americans feel themselves to be "addicted" to their phones. 40% are trying to cut down on screen time, but 27% doubt they will succeed at it. At any given moment during daylight hours, 660,000 Americans are using their phones while at the wheel of a car.
Phone usage at these levels leads to elevated levels of depression, anxiety, alienation, aggression, defiance, and bullying. Some people suffer impaired memory, concentration, decision-making, and problem-solving skills. Sleep disruption, reduced libido, obesity, and suicidal thoughts are also common.
What We Accomplished
Over three weeks in January and February of 2026, twenty volunteer "scrollers" sat alone inside the gallery at 2413 Hyperion, in full view of the busy pedestrian and car traffic outside, and stared at their phones for a full 5 hours and 17 minutes - the average amount of time Americans spend on their phones each day.
Scrollers logged their emotional states throughout each session, and the compiled data was presented at our closing reception on February 11th alongside a highlight reel of footage from the run. Both can be found below. During one session, a scroller performed during a concurrent live music event in the space, which made for a disquieting pair of parallel experiences - physical community and shared attention on one hand, isolation and inattention on the other.
Scrollers were live streamed on YouTube, and filmed from multiple locations on iPhones in vertical format. The footage from all 20 sessions will be combined to create a realtime, 105 hour 40 minute film. We will let you know when and how the film can be seen.
If we consider the commuter traffic on Hyperion Avenue to be our primary audience, we reached quite a few people. Extrapolating from available LADOT data, we estimate that roughly 110,000 vehicles passed by the very visible display over the course of the project. Neighborhood curiosity grew as the weeks went on, with pedestrians stopping by specifically to watch, making for some interesting moments. And at least one social media influencer shared the project with their hundreds of thousands of followers.
Profound thanks to the twenty scrollers who gave their time and attention to make the project happen, and to everyone who watched from the street, tuned in online, and attended to the music performance and wrap up reception. Y'all made it happen.
We see there is a widely shared concern that phone time, combined with algorithmic social media and AI, is harming our culture in ways we don't fully grasp, and don't know how to amend. We consider it a socio-technological problem, for which there may only be a cultural solution, or treatment. We hope we will have instigated a little thought about it for everyone who participated in and witnessed the show. Little shifts in thinking add up.
And we're not done. A companion project, this one about not-phone time, is in the works for winter of 2026. Stay tuned.
A sample reel of footage from the 20 sessions. The full material will be edited together into a single, real-time 105-hour-and-40-minute film. We'll announce when and where it can be seen.
Each participant logged their emotional states throughout their session. The compiled data from all 20 scrollers across all 20 nights is presented here.
Resources
Books
The Anxious Generation
Jonathan Haidt
Penguin Press, 2024
How Many Friends Does One Person Need?
Robin Dunbar
Faber & Faber, 2010
Enshittification
Cory Doctorow
MCD Books, 2025
Nexus
Yuval Noah Harari
Random House, 2024
The Age of Extraction
Tim Wu
Knopf, 2025
Amusing Ourselves to Death
Neil Postman
Random House, 2005
The Attention Merchants
Tim Wu
Vintage, 2017
Articles & Talks
"Connected, But Alone"
Sherry Turkle
TED Talk, 2012
"A Theory of Dumb: Why Are IQ Scores Suddenly Falling?"
Lane Brown
New York Magazine / Intelligencer, November 2025
"Read This. Then Put Away Your Phone."
Kevin Roose
The New York Times, 2019
"Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?"
Jean M. Twenge
The Atlantic, 2017
"The Binge Breaker: Profile of Tristan Harris"
The Atlantic, 2016
"Problematic Smartphone Use: A Conceptual Overview and Systematic Review of Relations with Anxiety and Depression Psychopathology"
Jon D. Elhai, Robert D. Dvorak, Jason C. Levine, Brian J. Hall
Journal of Affective Disorders, 2017
Recommended Product
Brick
A physical device to help reduce smartphone distractions
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Additional details coming soon.
Check back for updates.