How I Reduced My Screen Time

I always despised the ‘Screen Time’ feature on the iPhone. Instead of a tool to better myself, I viewed it as a guilt tracker, blaming me for excessive phone usage. I became painfully aware of this issue when one morning a few months ago, I decided to open my settings and check my average screen time for the week:

8 hours and 36 minutes.

And that was just average screen time. That does not include the time I spent watching Youtube videos on my iPad or playing the new Call of Duty Warzone on my Xbox.

Not only did I feel the immense guilt from a lack of productivity, I felt awful. The stay-at-home orders across the country had forced me inside for so long that my reliance on the technology for general happiness had reached a new high, or rather my tolerance for tech usage hit a new low.

If there was one thing I took away from the countless hours surfing the internet, it is the way in which people were starting to use their free time during the pandemic. By no means does every person have this luxury; still many essential workers continued to attend their jobs daily. But I was ultimately inspired to act on my behavior, particularly by those who did have more free time and were using it to find something productive to do. If I was on my phone for more than 8 hours a day, surely I had the time to use at least half of those hours to pursue something meaningful.

Which brings me to the point about tackling my problem of screen usage. As of writing this article, my average phone screen time sits at 3 hours and 43 minutes, a drastic improvement over the past few months. Here is how I did it.

Start with smaller objectives
Whenever I try to improve myself, I always end up overlooking the low-hanging fruit. That explains my failed attempts at veganism in high school, but I digress. Just as I was taught in my computer science classes, often the best way to tackle a problem is by breaking it down into smaller, manageable pieces and…

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