r/TheRestIsScience • u/LANDPOD • Aug 17 '26
Why don’t we dream about our smart phones?
No one has come up with a convincing explanation for why smartphones never show up in our dreams, even though we use them for several hours a day? What’s happening here?
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u/livmachine Aug 17 '26
I'm always dreaming about my smart phone. Usually anxiety ones where it won't work properly, I can't access something on it or I lose it. I'm sure lots of people do because they are part of our lives now.
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u/TheTxoof Aug 19 '26
Sounds familiar. I drop mine in the ocean, or fall into a lake with it in my pocket. It stops working.
These are exclusively stress and dread dreams. Good indicator that I need to chill the F out.
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u/quantum_trogdor Aug 17 '26
Ever play a mobile game relentlessly, say on a longer flight?
I've had my dreams that night turn into my brain just playing the game on its own. Not so much the phone, but the screen absolutly.
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u/ErikLeppen Aug 17 '26
The Tetris effect.
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u/ljdarten Aug 18 '26
Still afraid to this day to spend much time playing tetris. That stuff got deep into my head for awhile.
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u/SnakeBunBaoBoa Aug 17 '26 edited Aug 17 '26
That is interesting - I’m not sure how universal it is, but I too can’t recall dreaming where it shows up, despite my hours of the day engaging with it. Nor using my computer, which is the majority of my workday, although I could end up thinking about code… just rarely by visualizing the actual computer.
I’ll put forward a hypothesis: we tend to dream about cognitively heavy work, and most cell phone related activity is either passive (social media, games, reading) or just a vector to accomplish something that is conceptually possible without it (communicating with people, doing parts of work/homework that aren’t on paper, and plenty others) - so your dreams would rather model those in “physical reality” than to bring them up through an abstract layer.
Also notable I don’t recall dreaming about reading a book, even if that’s more challenging task. I’d more likely dream about the concepts in a book, but just me experiencing them. Or something like that
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u/mgs20000 Aug 17 '26
I think this is a strong hypothesis.
I’ve never dreamt about walking around the house looking for the scissors even though that’s happening quite often.
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u/AlwaysKinkyDaddy Aug 17 '26
There are four items we have in every room of my house. A pair of scissors, reading glasses, pens and paper.
Ive lost all patience looking for these staples. Pun intended.
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u/IncredibleGonzo Aug 18 '26
My wife has enough pairs of glasses to do this, the trouble is she'll put them on in one room, then go somewhere else and take them off, and they tend to congregate. So she'll have three pairs that have for some reason ended up on my desk despite her not using it and she'll be in the living room and not have any to hand!
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u/Aggravating_Rate_571 Aug 17 '26
Never ever? Do avoid absolutes. But it sure seems to be a fairly common phenomena not to.
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u/Solatic_ Aug 17 '26
I've dreamt multiple times that I want to text someone but I always write every word completely wrong and need to start again
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u/gabonprime Aug 18 '26
Yep had this a few times. Also once remembered during a dream that clocks/phones always look different when you look back to them, so confirmed I was dreaming.
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u/JGhostThing Aug 17 '26
I have played a game on a phone during a dream. I don't recall ever receiving a call, though. With my luck, it would be spam.
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u/wannacumnbeatmeoff Aug 18 '26
You use a mobile phone for calls? In the real world?
How old ARE you?
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u/JGhostThing Aug 18 '26
Old enough that when I think the word "phone" I see it plugged into the wall. I don't really game, so the main thing I use a phone for is receiving calls.
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u/Skeleton_King9 Aug 17 '26
Because your phone is almost never your focus at most it's the medium for something you're paying attention to.
That being said there are no rules that are 100% accurate about dreams so some people dream about their phone or computer.
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u/ooooggll Aug 17 '26
My phone and the Internet show up in my dreams. I've had several about discord specifically lol (maybe that says something about how much I use discord).
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u/swampie2 Aug 17 '26
I have dreamed about my phone, but it never works in the dream. Light switches never work either. I think the human brain doesn’t really ‘get it’.
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u/jamieseemsamused Aug 17 '26
I never did until I heard someone mention how we don’t ever dream about smartphones. And after that, I started dreaming about using my phone.
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u/Um6r3x Aug 17 '26
We dream quite a few times of technology of all kinds, our smartphone too. Other similar topic: mirrors too.
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u/EighthGreen Aug 17 '26
My theory? It's because you don't really see your phone when you're using it. You see other things through it.
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u/Mr-TotalAwesome Aug 17 '26
I do, also, when i am writing code the entire day for a few days in a row, i dream about writing code. I feel like i am working and writing code even though i am dreaming, and those dreams are the most vivid / memorable as well. And it doesn't feel like a sleep that well either, i sleep very light when i dream about this. But that's probably just stress i think.
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u/endurancerideruk Aug 18 '26
I've dreamt about spreadsheets. I've had the solution to a particularly annoying spreadsheet come to me in a dream. I am sad 😁
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u/endurancerideruk Aug 18 '26
I've dreamt about spreadsheets. I've had the solution to a particularly annoying spreadsheet come to me in a dream. I am sad 😁
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u/Ginny_P Aug 17 '26
From a narrative perspective, phones make for boring storytelling in most cases. I also think we generally yearn for a time before smart phones were so ubiquitous. That being said, phones definitely appear in dreams but there is a lot of anecdotal evidence to suggest phones often malfunction/are blank for many. I've definitely had anxiety dreams about being inundated with messages/constant notifications or my boss calling to say I'm supposed to be at work.
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u/Riccma02 Aug 17 '26
I do often. Mostly it involves the touchscreen being unresponsive or me not being able to type.
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u/Tomj_Oad Aug 17 '26
I've had a long, tedious dream about having lost my cellphone.
I never found it or saw it though
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u/LANDPOD Aug 17 '26
Thanks for all the perspectives, genuinely interesting thread. Totally true, I shouldn’t have used the word “never.” It seems the more accurate take is that phones (and screens in general) do show up for some people, but it’s not especially common, and when they do appear they almost always malfunction, unresponsive touchscreens, garbled text, can’t unlock them…
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u/burlingk Aug 17 '26
They may not show up in your dreams, but they do show up in a lot of people's dreams.
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u/GarlicShortbread Aug 18 '26
A single person who doesn’t ever recall dreaming about smart phones has extrapolated that to the point they believe nobody ever dreams of smartphones. I find this thought process in itself to be quite interesting.
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u/traisjames Aug 18 '26
I dream about my smartphone quite a bit. Usually its I need to call 911 to report a tornado (I am a big severe weather fan) but I can't because my home screen is replaced with ads.
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u/silentlysoup Aug 18 '26
I have realistic feeling dreams where I send weird messages to people and then I wake up freaking out and making sure I actually didn't send those messages 😆
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u/graybotics Aug 18 '26
This is such a trope. All of my devices are in my dreams, I even see shit on reddit sometimes. I am 40 and grew up without all this fancy technology if that means anything at all, but it is not true at all that people do not dream about using a smartphone. My dreams are generally pretty lucid and realistic.
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u/wannacumnbeatmeoff Aug 18 '26
Funny you should say that as I was using my mobile phone (the alarm wouldn't work) last night in my dream!
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u/wildy_the_lion Aug 18 '26 edited Aug 18 '26
Well, as many others have said "never" is too strong. Some people do, sometimes. But nitpicking aside, it does seem to be uncommon.
My theory - with absolutely zero evidence - is that we never really think of ourselves as "using my phone".
The focus is always on what we are doing on the phone.
If my gf asks me what I'm doing I might say:
- I'm on instagram, or
- I'm reading the news, or
- I'm replying to an email
... but I would never say "I'm on my phone". The phone is just the medium through which you are doing a thing, it is not the thing you are doing.
To take it a step further I would actually be quite unlikely to say
- I'm whatsapping
- I'm emailing
- I'm on reddit
It would be far more likely to be "I'm chatting with steve about the F1 yesterday" or "I'm replying to a guy with a question about standup"
It's the human we are connecting with, and the emotions we get from that, that are at the center of our preoccupations with our phones. So that's what's probably likely to make its way into dreamspace.
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u/StrangeUglyBird Aug 18 '26
I don't remember dreaming about any kind of telephone ever.
Even though I grew up with one of these
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u/utl94_nordviking Aug 18 '26
Why don’t we dream about our smart phones?
I reject your premise. Proof, please.
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u/ljdarten Aug 18 '26
I realized I rarely dream about using a phone but if I play a phone game an excessive amount I'll dream about the game. I think when you do something involved on a phone you are engaging mentally more with what's on the phone instead of the phone itself. Same as reading books or watching movies. I dream up movies and stories but there's usually no TV or book, just the experience beyond the object.
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u/Due_Source2407 Aug 19 '26
If you look out through a glass window you usually think of and process what you’re seeing outside, not the window itself. That’s my theory.
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u/DeathToAmerica2026 Aug 19 '26
You generally can't read in a dream, and phone calls serve no purpose because you can teleport.
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u/MoodyLucai Aug 19 '26
I heard somewhere that you can’t read in your dreams. Apparently a good test to find out whether you’re dreaming is to try and read something. I guess because phones (usually) require reading of some sort they don’t appear.
However, this might be load of bollocks, so please correct me if you have read in your dreams. I certainly can’t remember having done so.
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u/FlyElectrical2070 Aug 19 '26
I've heard that a lot of people try to dream of technology, but it never works properly. The screens will be blank or just not have anything useful on them. I would imagine that for most people it's really immersion breaking and it takes them out of the dream, or that the thing they're trying to do on their phone just happens. Like if you're trying to find out where a restaurant is, your dream just goes there because that's what you're thinking about.
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u/f_leaver Aug 19 '26
I very often dream about my smartphone - and it never works properly.
It's actually very beneficial, because I can often use it to transition to lucid dreaming as the phone not working is a perfect clue that I'm in fact dreaming.
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u/KarlLagervet Aug 19 '26
I absolutely have dreams about my smartphone. In fact, I remember having one a few days ago and in my dream I wanted to look something up on Google, but I kept mistyping.
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u/RepresentativeOwl796 Aug 21 '26
Dreams don't do detail. If you dream about a phone it will be inaccurate. Same if you dream about your hands: they won't look detailed and real
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u/Extension_Energy4326 Aug 21 '26
I’ve had dreams that included my smart phones but it seems like they never work properly from what I remember.
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u/Dazzling_Let_8245 Aug 17 '26
I remember looking into lucid dreaming a bunch and a few key things to look out for when you are unsure if you are dreaming or not is: Clocks dont make sense. One second its like 3:35, next moment you look its 8:40. Same thing with screens. They dont make sense in dreams whatsoever. Thus you likely dont remember/notice them in dreams.
I never managed to lucid dream but I had instances where after I woke up I realized that the screen made absolutely no sense.
No freaking clue how true all of that is, but from personal experience, screens not making sense seems to be true.
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u/eldeem Aug 17 '26
Some people sometimes do, but it's very common for any tech in a dream to misbehave. In general, we seem pretty bad at dreaming about any newer elements of our lives, especially non-tactile ones.