Why You Shouldn’t Feel Guilty About Your Screen Time
I write for a living, which means I reflexively spend most of my day trying to avoid writing. Computers are perfect for this: I have quick access to all the distractions you can think of, all on the device I should theoretically be using to write.
Perhaps the best part of this whole arrangement is how easy it is to feel guilty for all the things I don’t write. The best tool for this is the Screen Time feature offered onApple and Android devices, which allows you to see how much time you’ve spent using each app on your device. These are perfect guilt apps that don’t actually inspire any introspection or change: they just make me feel bad.
And guess what? I think the fact that I feel guilty and don’t do anything about it is on some level the reason these apps are built into phone operating systems. Features like these subtly shift the blame away from, and onto me, the intentionally addictive and addictive apps I use.
To make this argument, I’m going to talk about trash. Please, do not go.
Ignore the multinationals behind the scenes
Littering is obviously bad, and I’m not going to pretend it’s not. But most of the anti-litter messages you’ve seen are funded by companies that produce unnecessary packaging that ends up on the ground. To put it simply: There wouldn’t be so much trash if regulations forced companies not to overpack everything, but that would cut into profits. Anti-litter campaigns were a specific corporate tactic aimed at avoiding regulation. Here’s Bradford Plumer writing for Mother Jones :
In 1953, the packaging industry, led by the American Can Company and the Owens-Illinois Glass Company, inventors of disposable cans and bottles, respectively, merged with other industry leaders including Coca-Cola and the Dixie Cup Company to form Keep America the Beautiful (KAB). still exists today. KAB was well funded and launched a major media campaign targeting bad environmental practices by individuals rather than businesses.
This is not a conspiracy theory: everyone involved was quite open about their motives, as Plumer’s report makes clear. I’m not saying that all the people who work at Keep America Beautiful are cynical—I’m sure some people genuinely want to reduce trash, and reducing trash is a good thing. But what I am saying is that there is value for companies in shifting the blame for waste from wasteful packaging practices to individuals, and that value is the main reason such large companies divert money to such tactics.
I think the Screen Time feature on your phone is similar. I’m sure there are people at both Apple and Google who have genuine concerns about users’ phone habits, and that Screen Time features exist in part because of those genuine concerns. At the same time, however, the feature plays a trick similar to the anti-litter campaign: subtly shifting the blame for how much time we all spend on our phones from the tech industry to individuals.
It’s not about time, it’s what you do with it
Companies like Google, TikTok and Facebook hire the smartest people on the planet and incentivize them to create software that gets users to spend as much time as possible using their products. Using self-control to limit screen time in this context is not like using a knife in a gunfight, but using a water pistol in thermonuclear war. Tech companies know this—trust me, they obsess over user data more than you might imagine, and they know that screen time as a tool can, at best, help you aim your squirt gun a little better.
Simply put: if knowing how much time you’re looking at a screen actually helped you spend less time on your devices, this feature wouldn’t exist. I think there needs to be more regulation around the kinds of tactical apps used to get us into a scrolling trance, although I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon.
I recently read an article on Simone.org that sums it all up well, in far fewer words than I used here:
Here’s the truth: Screen time doesn’t matter. It’s not about how often you use your phone. It’s about whether your phone is a needy, attention-sucking vampire. If this is the case, then the only beneficial time spent in front of a screen is without it. Zero. This is why the main metric tracked by screen time apps is misleading: 10 minutes of crack cocaine IV is still 10 minutes of crack cocaine IV.
I’m not going to sit here and tell you which apps are good and which are bad – only you can figure that out for yourself. And I’m not going to tell you how you should use your device—again, that’s up to you.
What I’m going to tell you is that it’s important to think critically about how you use your technology. In theory, devices are tools. When you use them, it should be aimed at achieving a specific goal. This could be writing, an art project, or programming. It can also be relaxing. No matter your goal, it’s important to be intentional about how you approach it. Your attention is valuable: what you do with it literally shapes the person you become.
My advice is to think less about how much time you spend on your devices and think more about what you do with that time. Two hours spent scrolling through Reddit posts is different from two hours spent reading an e-book. I can go further: two hours spent scrolling r/all on Reddit is different from two hours spent reading Reddit reviews of a tool you’re thinking about buying. The important thing is not how much time you spend on the device, but to notice at any moment whether the time you are currently spending is well spent.
Trust me: developing such a habit will be annoying and in many ways an impossible task. But your relationship with technology, like any other relationship, is complex, and you need to work on it regularly if you want it to be healthy. Keep this in mind and consider turning off screen time notifications altogether.