Screen time
It is Monday morning and I get a message on my phone: the weekly average screen time. I briefly think about the past week and expect a low figure, as it feels like I spent relatively little time on social media last week. But the nasty surprise: 2 hours and 21 minutes.
I usually leave it at that and just resolve to really spend less time on my phone this week. But today I take a closer look and open the settings, search for screen time and finally find the list: I actually spend just under 50% of my time on my phone on social networks. Aside this, the functions vary greatly depending on the day.
As if this 2 hours and 21 minutes was not enough, the weekly average screen time of all my devices is also displayed: 10 hours and 12 minutes. That means I spend almost half of a whole day in the digital sphere. Not half of my waking hours, but a whole 24 hours, including sleep…
My reaction to the screen time
At first, I was extremely shocked by this value. In purely affective terms, this does not feel natural or desirable to me.
In addition to my personal feelings, the negative effects of digital use are now also becoming apparent in science. Mostly it is shown how harmful digital use can be for child development (for example by David Smahel et al.). But negative effects are also emerging for adults (this applies more to me, at least biologically). There is a lot of literature on digital stress these days. Or specifically for students like me, research shows that digital enhancement is linked by various effects that hinder our learning progress (see Neil Selwyn). One example of this, which I unfortunately know very well from my own life, is distraction. At any given time, you could be doing thousands of other things, consuming content and similar.
As with my cell phone, today I do not just leave it at simply displaying the exact amount of screen time off my tablet, but also look at the statistics and lists: I spend most of my time on my tablet working and studying. Of course, I do not want to hide the fact that I also use my tablet for entertainment, but to a much lesser extent than for learning. This really relieves me and calms me down a bit.
For me, this symbolises that the digital sphere does not only distract me. It also enables me to learn and work better and more efficiently. In addition to these productivity benefits, there are many other positive effects of going digital. Whether it’s the opportunity to get information much more easily and to broaden your personal horizons, or the chance to stay in touch with friends who have moved away. For me, a German student who is on an ERASMUS stay at the time of writing this blog, this is a real enrichment.
After all
With all that, what does an average day in the Digital look like for me? And above all, what do I think about it?
I spend an incredible amount of time in the Digital (almost half a day). It starts and ends with the alarm from my cell phone and in between there is a large variety of functions I use from day to day. But it turns out that I use most of my digital time during the day for learning. Followed by digital entertainment to clear my head, and wandering around on social media.
How I feel and think about this is difficult. At first, I am shocked at the amount of time I spend on digital, as I love analog life and being outdoors in nature. In addition there are many studies that show negative effects from digital use on well-being. But on closer inspection, I realise that I like my digital learning and really appreciate many other aspects. So for me, like most things in life, digital technology is probably not clearly bad or clearly good, but something in between.
What do you think and what does your day in the digital world look like?
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