Jason Kehe: I actually checked this recently, and I’m so pleased to report mine is under an hour a day.
Michael Calore: Wow.
Jason Kehe: I was in the company of, I think, three other people. One was at three hours, one at five, and another at nine. I, of course, won that-
Lauren Goode: Wait. Do you mean less than an hour on social media?
Jason Kehe: I checked the digital wellness setting or whatever it is, and it said average 59 minutes for everything, and it showed me 20 minutes on email, seven minutes on text, or whatever it was. Yes, that is my daily average.
Michael Calore: How does that compare to yours, Lauren?
Lauren Goode: I’m stunned. I don’t even know what to say. Well, I originally was going to say I refuse to answer this question, Mike, not because I don’t love you both, but I just feel no one really cares about my screen time. Mostly, it’s because I feel what matters more is how crappy I feel after I have spent too much time scrolling Instagram and other social media sites. It’s a qualitative analysis, not quantitative.
Jason Kehe: But what is the quantitative number?
Lauren Goode: I don’t know. Hours. Hours holistically, not just social media, of course, because I’m constantly reading online, and I’m constantly texting, and I’m constantly texting with sources. Not just friends and my mom, but actual sources on multiple messaging apps. It’s a lot. What about you, Mike? How much time are you online?
Michael Calore: A little over two hours a day.
Lauren Goode: I am going to look it up. Oh, my God.
Jason Kehe: What is it? What is it?
Lauren Goode: Oh, my God.
Jason Kehe: On-air reveal.
Lauren Goode: Eight hours and 43 minutes.
Jason Kehe: Incredible.
Michael Calore: What? Daily average? That is a lot of time.
Lauren Goode: It’s mostly Safari, Slack, and messages, which tracks.
Jason Kehe: But back to the conversation I was having with friends recently about our screen time, the one who was at nine hours, the closest to you, was weirdly the most at peace with her phone use. I just recently subscribed to the print edition of the San Francisco Chronicle so that I don’t have to look at news on my phone. I’m really in an unbundling. I think we should disaggregate our technological lives. The phone wants to be everything, but what if you just re-atomize your life into dedicated experiences and devices? Buy an alarm clock. Buy a GPS for your car. Subscribe to a newspaper.
Michael Calore: These are things that a lot of people are actually doing as solutions to the problem of spending too much time on their phone, when, in fact, they were just what we did before we had phones. My screen time used to be a lot worse. I took active measures to curb it, and then I have this new thing now where, whenever I’m eating a meal or watching a television show or something, I just turn my phone upside down, and it automatically silences notifications, puts it to sleep, and basically puts it into Do Not Disturb mode. And then when I want to, I can pick it up.
Services Marketplace – Listings, Bookings & Reviews