Slow Down The Screen Time: Tracking screen time for four days to see how long I spend on electronics

I was always blown away by how much time the people around me seem to spend on their phones when I was little. To this day, it feels like my peers can’t take two seconds to look up at me and answer a question. They’d instead be scrolling through social media, watching YouTube videos and playing games constantly. When I was little and touchscreen phones started to take over, I told myself that I didn’t want to be one of those sad phone-addicts when I was older — yet, hypocritically, here I am.

After tracking my screen time for four days — Sunday through Wednesday — my results were quite depressing. I couldn’t believe the amount of time I was dedicating to these trivial devices. With the immense increase in my addiction to screens, it was brought to my attention that something needs to change — technology was taking over not only my life, but — I discovered through a survey — lots of others’ as well. We need to fix this.

My daily average for the week was six hours and 49 minutes on my phone, and four hours and 58 minutes on my MacBook.

Making something so minute part of everything we do can be destructive, as we’ve seen in social media. Social media can flourish under the right treatment and the right usage, but it can also be used as a tool by many to promote bad behaviors, thoughts, and ideologies. I understand that having this phone isn’t all bad, it’s very helpful for political, social and economic situations. But there is a difference between using, relying and abusing.

I found that over the course of four days, the average amount of time on my devices was nine hours and 33 minutes. I spend over one-third of my day on a device.

It almost feels like a cycle — if I’m not on my phone, I’m doing schoolwork on my Mac. If I am not doing schoolwork on my Mac, I am on my phone. It seems like there is no way to escape the vicious circle that I feel I’m in.

I’ve always been the kind of person to play something in the background while I’m doing schoolwork — whether that be “Friends,” Billie Eilish or my favorite podcast “The Office Ladies.” But this doesn’t account for the number I got after I removed the overlapped time. For three of the days, I spent eight hours of my day on some sort of electronic. One day, I used them for a collective twelve hours — twelve hours — I can’t even imagine the amount of physics assignments and graphic designs I could’ve caught up on.

In an Instagram survey of 53 responses, 44 clocking in at over seven hours a day, 21 being 10 or more. Seeing all of these people share similar results as me made me feel better for a second but, after thinking about it more, it made me sad that we spent so much time spacing out, staring blankly at a rectangle that can bring us anything in an instant.

So after sitting and looking at these numbers, I came to a conclusion — I need to do better.

It’s understandable that in the middle of a pandemic, you use your phone more than you normally would. It’s all about regulation and being healthy about your habits.

Effects of over exceeding screen time not only gives you strained eyes and headaches, your sleep can suffer from it as well. Blue light from your phone suppresses melatonin — the sleep-promoting hormone. You can also damage your neck from looking down all the time.

Not only are there physical worries, but psychological as well. As stated by Rally health, dopamine is released almost as a reward for your actions, making you happy. Phones are basically an instant dopamine hit when you use it for games or entertainment. While this is okay within regulation, it can lead to addiction of this instant hit.

Though, I have gone days — even weeks — without my phone before. The minute that I stopped worrying about it is when my days really start to pick up. I was happier, more giving, and a much better person to the people around me. After not using it for a while, I feel so accomplished. I almost feel cleansed, and sometimes end up going on longer without it because I realized how great the world is without it constantly buzzing in my front pocket.

No more stress about friends arguing, no more anxiety about what could be going wrong in the world, and no constant reminder of tasks that need to be done.

So, like parents and doctors say, I’ve decided to put my phone down. I am going to try to keep myself below two hours a day on my phone, meaning I won’t play shows while I’m doing something else. I won’t spend more than an hour a day on social media, and I won’t pick it up as an instinctual reaction to being bored. I feel it’s a good first step for anyone trying to cut down how much time they spend on their phone.

Make a reasonable plan for yourself and stick to it, it should come naturally over time if you’re willing to break the habit of having your phone as your right hand man.