This is a strange situation compared with a few years back. In the past everything was done in the browser. I had a nokia 2700c which had opera mini. I used that for facebook, email, news, searching, research, music downloads, image downloads, attachment downloads etc.
But now; now we have apps for every little function and feature, for every needed and imagined use. I want to control the alarm of my house using an app. I want to check my balance in my bank account using an app. I want to buy coffee using an app. Or pizza or get some service using apps.
How did people get to that point? There are apps I have seen which just seem to fuel the need for being lazy.
Then there are those that force you to be checking your phone every minute for the new post or the new tweet. Those tweets can wait, those emails can wait, those instagram photos can wait.
The situation now is that almost every internet dependent activity you want to do on a phone is through an app. While ironically on a laptop every internet dependent activity is done through a browser (chrome OS)