Not all screen time is created equal
Six years ago, Apple introduced a new feature on iPhones and iPads: The Screen Time Report.
The notification pops up every Sunday and it informs iPhone users with a handy graph – just as they’re trying to relax before a stressful week – that they have once again failed to reduce their phone time over the past week.
The feature promised to empower users to manage their device time and balance the things that are really important. But is it actually doing that?
Caroline Mimbs Nyce, a staff writer at The Atlantic, recently wrote about why she thinks Screen Time is the worst feature Apple has ever made. She told Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino that it sometimes feels like Screen Time is doing more guilt-tripping than empowering these days.
The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.
Caroline Mimbs Nyce: Time is just sort of a weird way to measure our relationship with our devices. We have these sort of magical smartphones that come with a lot of utility, but they also come with a lot of distraction. So, figuring out how to regulate that is not just a question of time, but actually one of really being thoughtful about what are the positive and the negative use cases of a phone? How does it make me feel? And that actually matters a lot when we’re talking about health outcomes.
Meghan McCarty Carino: Yeah, the addition of the Screen Time feature seems to be kind of an admission by Apple that they know that there can be some negative effects of being on your phone too much, and they wanted to allow users to “take control” of the time they spend on their devices. Does this actually do that?
Mimbs Nyce: A spokesperson for Apple did not respond to my question about whether or not they have any evidence that Screen Time helps people reduce the time spent on their phone. So, it’s sort of unclear. I don’t know if there are any good studies that really track time, but what we do know from the broader health literature is that all of this stuff is really context dependent. So, you could have someone using their phone for Google Maps and someone who’s using it to doom scroll and having anxiety or depression because of that. But even on an app level, it’s really hard to tell. So, you could have someone that uses Instagram and they have a group chat with their friends and they’re sending each other memes and having a blast. Or you could have someone who uses Instagram to scroll through photos that really affect their self-esteem, and they’re comparing themselves with what they see. So, it’s just really complicated, and a lot of the science suggests that the context is what really matters.
McCarty Carino: The one thing it does seem like this feature has been successful at is making people feel guilty about how much time they’re spending on their phones. Is that something that’s widespread?
Mimbs Nyce: I definitely relate to that. I absolutely feel guilty. I write in my piece about how I had this beautiful day recently, and then found out I used my phone for six hours during it, and it sort of reflexively made me go, “Oh my gosh, what did I do?” And then I had to remind myself that I had paddled out and surfed and kayaked and done all these beautiful offline things, and it’s actually okay to use your phone in some instances. The one caveat I will give to this is that experts did tell me that sleep does matter, obviously. So, if your phone is impeding on your sleep time, whether it’s the most productive, positive thing or a super distracting thing, it’s time to turn it off and put it away.
McCarty Carino: We have been, I think, alluding to phone use by adults, but there is increasing concern about the effects of phone use, and especially social media use for younger people. Are we right to be concerned about screen time in that demographic?
Mimbs Nyce: So the research on teens and tech is also really murky, and it’s very highly contested at the moment. One meta-analysis, so a study of studies that looked at teens and technology use, found that there was a negative but small correlation between phone use and negative mental health effects, but that correlation was too small to actually guide policy. So, we’re in sort of a tough spot where whether we’re talking about teens or adults, we don’t totally know the health effects of these devices that follow us around all day. But even with teens, it does seem to be context dependent. That being said, this is a very hot moment in the discourse right now for teens and smartphone use. And I think what I wanted to make sure is that the adult conversation wasn’t getting muddled with the teen conversation.
McCarty Carino: You tried out some other apps and programs that claim to help users reduce their screen time. What did you find with some of these other apps?
Mimbs Nyce: I did. It was really fun. A lot of the other apps are a lot more customizable, which I really appreciated. And experts told me that that’s something that would be really useful if you are concerned about certain negative health effects of using your phone. So, they had the ability to sort by app. One service I was using called Opal actually categorizes apps by productive or distracting, and it doesn’t count the productive apps towards the screen time that it calculates. So, I found it really helpful. Experts suggested that that’s the way to go here, that something that’s flexible, that allows you to set goals for what you want to do and isn’t just a notification coming at you on Sunday morning saying implicitly “you used your phone too much last week, stop doing that.” And is instead something that allows you to really set those goals and then try to meet them.
McCarty Carino: So, after thinking about this so much and reporting this piece, did you keep the screen time notifications on?
Mimbs Nyce: The notifications are on right now. I will say at one point when I was reporting, and this didn’t go in the piece, but I turned the feature off and I found that I had a much more peaceful relationship with my device. So, for now, it’s on, it might go off again, but, you know, I think my main concern with screen time was feeling tortured by it. And I think when I was feeling tortured, it wasn’t productive for me. And now I feel like I’m in a much better place, where I am a lot more mindful about this notification that doesn’t mean anything. You know, I can say “this is a perfectly fine use of my phone, and I’m going to disregard this notification,” or, I can say “hey, this actually is making me feel kind of cruddy,” and maybe I’m going to put my phone in a box or choose not to use that app as much.
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