Opinion
Why I no longer feel bad about my screen time
Brodie Lancaster
Culture writer, author and co-host of See Also podcastEvery Monday morning, my phone lights up with information that determines if I’ve become a better person or not.
“Weekly Report Available”, the message begins. It goes on to detail the average number of hours and minutes I spent on my device (just this one – not the other screens I turn to for comfort and distraction and, occasionally, work) over the past seven days.
Credit: Robin Cowcher
I don’t remember when I started caring about my screen time. Probably somewhere between being 16 and first experiencing the thrill of having a crush on someone who wanted to text me all the time – when I suddenly felt bereft and aggressive if I was separated from my flip phone for even a second – and seeing the illustration of how human bodies would evolve to account for the fact we hunch and bow our heads over a screen so much now.
Being connected went from fun to essential to dangerous, but by the time I realised a little divot had formed in my pinkie in the spot where my iPhone rested, it seemed too late to turn back the clock. Still, I had to try something.
A few years ago I went a little mad and set up a detailed spreadsheet to track the data of my life each day. As 2021 turned into 2022, and realising I had nothing to show for the previous two years of protracted, stop-and-start lockdowns – no new manuscript to hawk to a potential publisher, no new hobby besides my recently acquired love of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, no six-pack, just my pinkie divot and bad knees – I didn’t just want to change some of the habits I’d picked up, I wanted to quantify them.
Every movie I watched was logged in a little cell, and I jotted down the book I picked up and read each day. I had been a smoker for years, and logged how many cigarettes I lit in a 24-hour period. In an attempt to exercise more consistently, I logged how many steps I did. I’d wanted to get my finances in order, so I took stock of how much money I spent each day and noted it down, categorised by “planned” (rent, cat food, groceries) and “unplanned” (anything I ordered just to feel the thrill of seeing a parcel had arrived). My screen time went in there, too. At the end of each month, I’d recap how I’d behaved and try to beat it the next month.
What we often miss in conversations about screen time are all the functional and social tools inside my little glowing addiction machine.
The data scratched an itch in my type-A brain. By the end of the year I could see that it took me, on average, 4.4 days to finish a book, making even a doorstop-sized Franzen feel a little less intimidating. I quit smoking. I took up weightlifting and found the joy in working out that I really, truly believed gym bunnies were lying about.
Competing with myself – the one from the day before or the month before – worked. I could see her stats and knew I could beat her.
But even when I knew how self-satisfied I felt after a rare three-hour screen-time day, there was nothing that could take away the joy, terror, necessity and psychic torture of the scroll.
Coming into the holidays feels like the right time to try again. But part of me thinks it’s a lost cause to even try to cut back, to disconnect, to tap out.
And that’s because, I’ve noticed, what we often miss in conversations about screen time – which revolve around doom-scrolling and futile consumption – are all the functional and social tools inside my little glowing addiction machine.
I’m managing my calendar and checking my bank balance, making plans with friends and watching videos of my niece meeting Santa. When I ascribe a morality to the number of minutes I spend on my phone each day, I’m implicitly saying the long FaceTime with my sister was bad for me, or I should try to be a better person by not jumping into a work email and ironing out a sticky miscommunication, and instead stare into the sun or bake bread from scratch.
I’m going to spend my summer break in the city away from my family, attempting to both finally make a dent in that manuscript and work my way up to deadlifting 100 kilograms. I’m going to stare at a screen in order to make plans with my friends and book restaurants and movie tickets. I’m going to watch videos that offer tips to help improve my form in the gym, or look up recipes for elaborate desserts only my holiday-self is delusional enough to attempt. And I’ll only feel a little guilty when the Monday morning analysis arrives.