Screen Time: How I Use My Phone During the Week
A few weeks ago, when I first activated screen time on my iPhone, an IOS feature that allows you to track which apps you use and how long you use them for, I didn’t expect much. I consider myself to be someone that doesn’t use their phone very often. Don’t get me wrong, I definitely think I could benefit from cutting down on my screen time, but the majority of my technology use comes from my laptop rather than my phone. So, having said this, I was especially surprised when I discovered that my average daily iPhone use was over two hours and 41 minutes a day, and nearly 19 hours a week. In order to gain a better understanding of my media habits, I decided to make an infographic breaking down my phone usage during the week.
Using the data collected over the course of nearly a month, I created two different charts that help to visually analyze my screen time during a typical week. The Screen time feature automatically sorts the apps you use into different categories. The first chart I decided to create examines how long I use apps that fall under these different categories. The second chart I created looks at my phone usage during a typical week. I thought it would be important to see how my media habits change throughout the week to gain a clearer picture as to why my phone usage was so high.
Using the data presented above, we can draw a few conclusions about my media habits. Firstly, it is worth mentioning how my phone usage evolves over the course of the week. While Tuesday serves as a small outlier, My media usage tended to rise each day from Sunday to its peak on Wednesday. During the later half of the week, from Wednesday onward, my media usage declined at a fairly steady rate. Surprisingly, my phone usage during the weekends was significantly lower than during the week.
Looking at the data in the second chart, it is immediately clear that I spend the most time on apps that fall under the category of entertainment. As stated earlier, I tend to consume the majority of my media through my laptop. Whether I’m working on an assignment for school, browsing the web, or watching a soccer game, the size of my laptop and the user interface makes media consumption far easier. That’s why it was initially so surprising to me to see such a high figure, not just in this category, but overall. However, a closer analysis revealed a clear explanation. Since it is no longer 2010, and I no longer own an mp3 player, I use my phone to listen to music. This is especially true during my 45 minute commute to school everyday. Over 3 hours 45 minutes were spent in the apple music app, the highest total amount of any app during the week. Besides listening to commute on my drive to campus, I spent close to an hour watching videos on youtube. While this all technically counted as screen time, it certainly helps ease my concerns regarding my media habits and helps explain the daily and weekly averages.
My second highest phone usage during the week fell under the category of social media, with over fours hours spent in apps like instagram, snapchat, and twitter. Other than for entertainment and staying in touch with friends, I used my phone for fairly productive reasons. For example, I sometimes use my phone to join my zoom and webex meetings when it is more convenient than my laptop. The remaining categories, “news”, “shopping”, and “creative,” totaled less than two hours during the week, an average of just a few minutes a day. While this all technically counted as screen time, breaking down the data certainly helps ease my concerns regarding my media habits and helps explain the daily and weekly averages.
