Thoughts From The West End

I noticed on my phone that it gives me a weekly screen time summary. It is basically telling me how many hours that week I was looking at my phone. In the past I hadn’t really paid any attention to it and thought that it was probably somewhere below the average for an adult (didn’t know what that number actually was). Let me just say I was shocked at the amount of time I spent on my phone. That shocked feeling was a little more on the disgust side.

This made me take an inventory of what I use my phone for. Of course, I use in the traditional sense, as a phone. We don’t have a landline telephone in our home, and we use our phones to talk to family, friends, and on many occasions business. However, I know that I don’t talk on my phone anywhere near that dreaded screen time number. News, weather, social media, web browsing, Plants vs. Zombies, and Life 360 all get my attention daily. Even though I use my phone for what I call practical use I still couldn’t believe my number.

Lucky for me I come from a generation that did not grow up with smart phones. I can remember life with no easy access to those things mentioned above, and in fact social media and web browsing did not even exist until my adult years. According to a study I found surfing the web puts the number for Americans at 7 hours per day. It is a very difficult number to grasp and one that is hard to believe, until you look around. Everywhere you go you see people looking at their phones. My kids are constantly on their phones, and it isn’t just for recreational uses, screen time is incorporated into schoolwork.

I survived my first 20 plus years of my life without a smart phone. It is easy to understand the benefits of this technology, but it does not mean I need or want to be the average user. This month I make it a challenge for anyone who wants to join me to significantly reduce the hours of screen time. My goal is two hours or less per day for the month of April. I will report my experience next month in Thoughts from the West End. -Jpa