When I first bought an iPhone, I remember regularly checking the App Store charts, searching for anything new or exciting to install on my phone. The top apps weren’t just installed on my phone, but also on all of my friends’ phones. It seemed like everyone had the same selection.

I don’t think that’s true anymore. As the number of apps has increased many-fold, and perhaps as the cultural milieu has become more diverse, I think the selection of apps on people’s phones varies to a much greater extent.

So I wondered: what proportion of today’s most popular apps are installed on my phone?

Of the top 10 free apps on the App Store, only one (ChatGPT) is installed on my phone. Of the top 20, only three are installed. Many of my apps rank lower in the charts, but I still have 18 of the top 50 installed—more than I might have guessed.

Of the top 50 paid apps, I have only one. I also have just one of the top 50 free games, and none of the top 50 paid games.

I’m not sure what any of this means, but it feels like a big change compared to fourteen years ago. Perhaps our personal devices have become a little more personal than they once were? Or maybe our collective attention is becoming ever more fragmented, threatening the shared nature of reality? Or perhaps both?

The image at the top of this post was generated by DALL·E 3.