47 Hours of Screen Time

47 hours of screen time in a single week. Longer than a week at work, longer than watching a Christopher Nolan film 15 times. And the craziest part? This doesn’t include TV at home. It does include YouTube videos that I leave in the background so maybe say it’s 40 hours instead?

This feels like a record week in doom scrolling. I also did 10 minutes of TikTok making over the week so how about that.

I have continuously been disappointed with my posting production. It has been several months since my last consistent burst. Practically a year since the content I wanted to make, that was interesting for me, that helped others.

I whined about things not changing but I looked at my phone for 47 hours last week.

The question needs to be asked. How do I lower this? The typical route I take in these circumstances is to delete all social media apps. My phone becomes practically a flip phone. The best way to combat a bad habit is to make it disappear. There is one problem though. I want to make a digital business. I want to post consistently to get in the game.

Thought about allowing apps but only allowing them to post and schedule posts and then delete them immediately after. The issue with that is I have to redownload the app every time I post, and I am a lazy undisciplined person usually so making a habit difficult to start with multiple barriers isn’t the best way to go.

I am going to try to keep apps on my phone but only being able to mindlessly scroll through marketing improvement TikToks. It keeps the app on board, it produces much more than watching random movie scenes, and the slower pace of the video scrolling means I won’t want it as much.

Another way to take this is to add one app at a time. Instagram has been my most popular app so I am going to delete that one and have TikTok as the one I will try to get a good habit built upon first.

The next thing I need to get back into is having better alternatives than just scrolling. For a couple of months this year I got into chess. I have since hit a plateau and my improvement stopped so I stopped playing. This was a fun hobby to have and something easy to play. A competitor to the constant scrolling. I think it is something I should probably continue even though I won’t ever be the best at it, but it is a good distraction and much more optimal than Instagram reels and TikTok. When I scroll through these apps, I typically get nothing out of it. Just a time waster.

These are actionable steps, add chess, and only watch scrolls that are catered to help me improve. I have a lot of bad habits but if I can slowly get rid of them and add good habits, I can make 2025 as good of a year as 2024. 47 hours of screentime is alarmingly high for just my phone.