Monitoring My Screen Time
Raise your hand if you’re in a love/hate relationship with this new screen time report from your iPhone🙋🏼♀️
Yup, that’s a fun new thing to check if you haven’t already. It was the Monday after starting my blog that I woke up to a notification of my screen time report. I didn’t even know it was something you could check. Now that I have I can’t stop thinking about it. At first, I was shocked. I mean I know I’m checking my phone a lot, but that much?! How? I immediately started putting time limits on my apps, I should be cutting myself off I was sure!
Then I cut myself a little slack. That week especially, I was putting endless hours of work into this website, a new Instagram account, a Pinterest. I am so proud of the work I’ve done to get this started. None of which would have been possible if I wasn’t on my phone. I calmed down and decided to look at exactly what apps I was spending the most time on. Number one, Instagram, no surprise there. Next, text messages, another one that didn’t shock me. Next one was my alarm clock, this made me laugh because I’m the type of person to set a million and one alarms to get up in the morning. But other top contributors to my screen time were apps I was using for photo editing, planning apps to keep me organized on what I want to post and when, Spotify, and my meditation app.
I decided I definitely wanted to monitor my screen time. I didn’t want to do one of those “social media detoxes” that I’ve seen people post about because lets face it, I’ve now started this platform that relies on me engaging on social media and I’m happy doing that. Instead, I’m trying to lower the time I spend on certain apps, but not beating myself up over time spent listening to music, or putting myself to sleep with the mediton app.
Here are some of the steps I’ve taken to monitor my screen time!
Reading
Usually on my commute in the mornings, I’m playing a game on my phone and listening to music to pass the time. I decided to start bringing a book with me. And in the week that I’ve started to do that I’ve finished a book and a half and loved it. It passes the time much faster than angry birds ever did! I also try to read a bit before bed to tire me out instead of scrolling through my phone.
Meditation
I have always had a hard time falling asleep. This summer I downloaded a few mediation apps to help me sleep on the nights I’m having an especially hard time. While this still registers as screen time on my phone, I don’t consider this a negative thing. Instead of scrolling through my phone until I fall asleep, I will put on a half hour sleep meditation and most of the time I don’t even make it though 15 minutes before I’m out. Instead of checking Instagram first thing in the morning, I try to do a five minute meditation to wake myself up as well.
Using My Screen Time Wisely and Positively
I know I will continue to check Instagram everyday, especially now that I’ve started this blog. But instead of mindlessly scrolling while watching TV or when I’m bored, I want to do something more constructive with that time. When I notice myself not even paying attention to what I’m doing on my phone, I’ll grab my laptop or notebook and start jotting down ideas for content to produce or deliberately look for things to inspire me on Pinterest instead of scrolling through and not really paying attention.
I know I’ll never have an extremely low screen time, but I definitely think it’s important to be mindful of it. Do you have any tips on this? Let me know!
