How much time do you spend on your phone?
The other day, I was clicking through my phone after finally succumbing to the suggested updates and noticed a couple of features in quick succession: something called “my activity” on Instagram that told me how much time I spent on the app in an average day, and an option for “screen time” in my general settings.
I was quickly alarmed by all of the numbers I was seeing. Although I knew I spent a lot (read: too much) time on my phone, seeing it in black and white was disturbing. Over the past week, I had spent an average of 50 minutes per day on Instagram and more than three hours per day on my phone. Diving deeper, I was picking up my phone an average of 136 times per day (that’s more than eight times an hour!). Instagram was by far the app that I spent the most time on, with messaging and Facebook a distant second and third.
Part of my phone usage over the past week could absolutely be attributed to a majority of those days spent traveling for both work and pleasure: Google Maps and Lyft were #4 and #6 on the list, pointing to plenty of time figuring out where I was going and then browsing on my phone as I got there.
Even so, I was concerned. Out of my sixteen waking hours, I was spending a quarter of them on my phone. As I write this, I can’t count how many times I’ve been tempted to pick up my phone, which is lying to the left of my computer: but for what? Why?
I know that I’m a sucker for the dopamine hit of Instagram likes, and that I can often get sucked into gazing into other people’s lives, and that I sometimes agonize over photo editing in VSCO and feed planning in UNUM. Group texts are the main way I keep in touch with some of my best friends, as well as my parents and in-laws. I take far too many photos of my pug. When I’m not in front of my computer during the work day, I regularly check in on my work email and company Slack.
In short: a lot of my life is lived on my phone, whether that’s creative or productive, connecting or distracting, good or bad. There’s a lot of gray area: sure, I feel the need to post on Instagram as part of this blog…but scrolling endlessly down my feed can sometimes inspire, but can often stir up feelings of jealousy or being less-than.
Seeing those numbers made it clear: I was uncomfortable with how much time I was allowing myself to lose to that shiny addiction that fits in my back pocket. For all of the things I wasn’t doing because I felt too busy, for all of the relationships I was letting fall through the cracks, for all of the new year’s resolutions that remain undone as we near the end of the year: would I ever look back and feel like I wished I had spent more time on my phone? Doubtful. And although I’m not a parent, it’s one of the things that worries me a lot about having a kid in this day and age: I’m always so alarmed when I see parents scrolling through their phone instead of interacting with their child for extended periods of time. (FYI I just picked up my phone again and thought WHY STOP BEING A HYPOCRITE LOOK WHAT YOU ARE WRITING and put it down.)
With all of that said, I’m not sure exactly where to go from here, but I have a few ideas to try and move some of those numbers down.
- Take advantage of the timer feature on Instagram that will alert you when you’re nearing your daily (self-imposed) limit. My new goal is to spend no more than 30 minutes per day on Instagram.
- Figure out what notifications make sense. I currently get an average of 67 per day, mostly for new messages and calendar alerts (sometimes life-saving, often unnecessary). I had already turned off most of the social media and email push notifications, which I highly recommend, but I need to reassess what I am being notified about to make sure it’s adding value and not just distractions.
- Invest in a fitness tracker. I like tracking my steps in the iPhone health app, but because I rely on my phone as my tracker, I feel tethered to my phone all. the. time. I’d love to get back to doing things like walking the dog or going to the grocery store without my phone, and am also into more of advanced health tracking that’s possible for steps and sleep. My one rule: not setting up any options that allow texts or email or calendar push notifications!
- Move my phone off my nightstand and get a better clock. Although I still sleep with my phone in airplane mode (which I still highly recommend), I charge it on my nightstand overnight: this makes late-night scrolling on Instagram accessible when I’m having a tough time falling asleep. And although I have a very cute alarm clock, it’s not really functional: it’s a pretty terrifying noise in the morning (which I don’t mind on the occasions when I need to use it, but David almost always wakes up later than me and he deeply hates it) and I can’t see it in the dark.
- Leave my phone in another room when I have deadlines or a long to-do list. There is PLENTY to distract me on my computer. I do not need to add Instagram or non-time-sensitive texts to the mix.
- Be more aware of why. I’m guilty of picking up my phone to ostensibly do something, and then five minutes later with checks of Instagram, Facebook and my email done…ask myself what I meant to do on my phone? It’s that same impulse I’ve felt through the whole writing of this post: I feel the urge to look at my phone, but without any good reason. I need to start being clearer with myself on what is necessary and what is a waste, and hold myself to those standards.
