My Screen Time Is a Problem—and I Kinda Knew It

Was I surprised? Not one bit. Was I ashamed? Absolutely.

When the assignment came to track the time I spent consuming media throughout the day, I had a rough idea of what the results would be. As an iPhone carrier, I’m always greeted on Sunday mornings with my “weekly report” detailing the time spent and apps used on my phone during the previous week. This feature, at the very least, is meant to serve as an informative tool—but for users like myself, a cautionary instrument.

According to experts, adults should only spend two hours in front of a screen outside of work. According to my phone’s screen time tracking, along with my self-conscious tracking for this assignment, I eclipsed two hours' worth of screen time within the first four hours of my day. As soon as I woke up, the first thing I did was say a 30-second prayer and spend about another 45 minutes in bed, on my phone, slothing.

This process has become a routine. I check my phone to check emails, check social media and maybe listen to sports debate television, all to catch up on what I missed as I slept. However, that catching-up process quickly moves from informative to purely entertaining as I lay in bed and get my fill of what those younger than me would refer to as “brainrot.” Brainrot has become the term that affectionately encapsulates the slew of irresponsible, misinformed yet incredibly funny media.

Finally, with my day eventually started, I went to work for what I knew would be a day of distractions. As a student worker, the workload is minimal by design. Collegiate supervisors understand that school always comes first for their student workers and therefore try not to be much of a burden. The consequence of this decreased workload, however, is the idle time that comes with it.

Sitting in my chair, there was always a competition between the work that I was supposed to do and the more entertaining social media I was not supposed to be engaging with. And as the day went on, it became clear that social media was winning. The emails could wait. The work could wait. But the impulse to shamefully close and instinctually reopen TikTok had become a necessity. It was at this point that it became obvious that the accusation of Gen Z being a “microwave generation,” in my case, had some validity to it.

My attention span had been snapped. Mere minutes into trying to be productive and accomplish tasks, my computer had a tab open, looking at products that I didn’t even have the money to purchase.

By the end of the day, I couldn’t ignore it—I wasn’t just losing time, I was giving it away. I always tell myself I’m just checking in, just catching up, just taking a quick break. But those “justs” add up fast, filling more of my day than I’d like to admit. This assignment didn’t exactly shock me, but it did force me to sit with the reality of it. The real question now isn’t whether I know the problem—it’s whether I’m actually willing to do something about it.