Screen test
ONE MONDAY MORNING EARLY THIS YEAR, bleary-eyed and getting ready for work, I am interrupted by a notification on my phone: an Apple Screen Time alert, informing me my usage last week was up by 60%: to 19 hours 24 minutes a day. I stare at the numbers for a while. Anyone who gets the recommended eight hours’ sleep is awake for just 16 hours a day – I apparently spent several hours more than that using my phone. I share a screengrab with friends, who react with concern, if not much surprise.
That I am a heavy phone user hardly comes as a shock to me, either – I work as an editor at an investigative journalism organisation on a team of more than 20, I have a second job as a columnist and I spend more time on Twitter than is good for anyone’s sanity. Being glued to my phone is virtually a career necessity, even if I am guilty of spending an excessive amount of time on the game Tents and Trees, too.
Even so, 19 hours seems like overkill – and so it turns out. A careful search of Apple support forums reveals there has been a glitch in its time online feature that has in some cases dramatically inflated the numbers.
I make an adjustment for that, but the real figure isn’t much better: around nine hours a day. Over the previous week I’ve had no fewer than 3,845 phone notifications (760 on one day) and have unlocked my phone 1,635
