What’s your screentime?

I know, I know. Before you roll your eyes, I encourage you to pull out your phone right now and look at it. But don’t just look at the number, look at the stats.

What category has the highest screentime. Is it education? Is it entertainment? What day of the week do you regularly have the highest screentime. Which day is the lowest? Is your screentime higher on weekends? How often do you pick up your phone? etc…

I don’t know about you, but throughout my first two years at college, I found myself inexplicably overwhelmed ALL THE TIME. Even on days that I didn’t have assignments to turn in or classes to attend, I felt an overwhelming sense of dread that I had let the whole day go to waste.

It wasn’t until my third year of college (better late than never?) that I really started to reflect. I started trying to view my day on an objective level, as if I was in a science experiment under a microscope and there was a little man in a lab coat with a clipboard meticulously writing down every task I was doing with time stamps. When I viewed my life this way, I realized that…

it really was the darn phone! (Mom, you were right all along…)

I’ve always been pretty aware of trying to limit my phone usage. But I didn’t realize just how dependent I was on the constant mental stimulation from using my phone. If I had to wait in line for a few minutes, take a break from work, or even just wait for my pasta water to boil, my phone would be the first thing I turned to. It felt like I didn’t have the mental fortitude to just stay in my own thoughts for more than a few minutes, because I was too bored and/or overwhelmed with the very thought of being alone with my thoughts.

I think a lot of people who are my age that grew up with screens from a very young age also have this issue. I go to the library and literally everyone is either staring at a laptop or staring at a phone. Sometimes, if I need a break from staring at my computer and decide to rest my eyes by blankly staring at a wall, I get nervous thinking that I must look a little crazy! But what’s crazy about want to take a minute to relax your brain from the constant barrage of information that we’re absorbing? After all, our brains are kind of similar to muscles in that the more you use it, the stronger it gets. But nobody is going to be in the gym 24/7 lifting weights.

At this point, I knew that I had to make a change. I couldn’t rely on my phone forever. I decided to quit cold turkey! Not by getting rid of my phone, because having the ability to message and call was still invaluable to me. I decided to delete every social media app, TikTok, Instagram, and even YouTube. I also put time restrictions on my phone so that I would be reminded every couple of minutes to turn it off. And I recently also put my phone in black and white so that staring at it for prolonged periods would get tiring. If I need to watch a YouTube video, I have to specifically search for it on browser. Otherwise, all I really need is google and a couple of other miscellaneous apps for my day-to-day.

Now that it’s been a couple of months of doing this, I’ve managed to reduce my screentime from somewhere around ~3-4 hours a day to ~1 hour. And that hour is usually spent googling, messaging, calling, or using the iClicker app for my classes.

Before, I was estimated to have spent over 12 years looking at my phone. Now, I’m estimated to spend only 3 years. Still a bit high, but a win is a win. Ideally though, I would prefer to get my screentime to < 25 minutes a day.

Anyways, here is the quote of the day that I think ties into this post pretty well:

“No man is free, who is not master of himself.” - Epictetus