‘It’s annoying when friends are on their phone when we meet up’
Dayeon, 16: the teenager who spends less than an hour a day on screens
I think my screen time is what adults want their kids to have. I’ve heard some of my friends’ parents tell them, “You should be like that, too.”
I got my first phone when I was 12, as my mum wanted to be able to contact me to pick me up from school. When I got it, I had strict screen time rules: it was turned off after an hour. I still don’t use it much.
I’m not on social media. Instagram and TikTok can lead to a lot of problems for your mental health. I’ve definitely seen friends get self-conscious; double-checking everything they say.
Some friends spend more than six hours a day on social media. They use it to keep in touch and post nice pictures. After school, many scroll on Instagram late into the night, and it sometimes affects how focused they feel the next day. They tell me it’s a good thing I don’t have it so I can focus on school work. Sometimes I feel left out of their conversations, but it doesn’t really affect my relationships with them. They’re not intending to leave me out and they don’t judge me, they just think it’d be easier.
It is annoying when friends are on their phone while we are hanging out – scrolling on Instagram and talking about what they’re looking at. It’s boring. I don’t understand why people meet up in real life to then look at their phone.
I worry that there’s so much online that’s trackable, which makes me feel uncomfortable. I was part of a dance group in elementary school when I was 10 and now videos of me dancing are still online – I didn’t even know they’d been posted. Even if I type my friends’ names into Google, I can see stuff they did when they were much younger. It’s scary, there’s no way to reset your past.
Neither of my parents have social media. My dad uses screens up to 15 hours a day, because he is a software engineer and is constantly online. But if you took away his work, he probably uses them for around one hour a day for pleasure. My mum uses her phone for around five hours a day for watching shows.
I don’t really worry if my screen time will go up in future. Right now, focusing on my school work and relationships is more important than being on social media. I think even when I am in university or working, I won’t doomscroll. CM
Daily screen time
Phone 30 minutes-1 hour
Computer None outside of school work
TV None
* * *
‘I worry about the time I spend on my phone. I get carried away’
Shere, 85: the octogenarian whose social life revolves around WhatsApp
I like WhatsApping. Mostly I speak to my family and friends in Trinidad. In the morning I open my messages and say good morning to everyone; I try to find a nice image and emoji to send.
The phone hooks you in. I’m part of different WhatsApp groups, I’m in one called “Curry and Chips” with the boys. I’ve got TikTok and YouTube on my phone to watch videos they send; some are funny, a lot are rubbish. You get so engrossed. The other day I was making my porridge and it boiled over because I was on my phone.
My wife died earlier this year; we met when I was 14. Being on my phone doesn’t make me feel less lonely, but it helps me communicate with people, otherwise I don’t speak to anyone. I’ve joined three old people’s groups that operate locally. We organise meet-ups on WhatsApp and swap pictures. Once a week we get together to do some exercise and have breakfast.
I watch westerns every day. My son just gave me a smart TV and I want to learn how to use YouTube on it, so I can find old calypsos. I find typing difficult, so I use Alexa to listen to music and the radio, and set alarms.
The phone is a must these days and older people need to learn to use it. Everything is online and we’re getting left behind. Doctors send messages online, and we need the NHS app to book appointments.
I check the phone first thing in the morning and before I go to bed. I don’t want to miss texts confirming hospital appointments. I check every day, but then I get sucked into reading and sending messages. I’d like to learn how to use a computer or tablet.
The downside of the phone is it takes too much of my time. There’s so much rubbish. Some people send too many pictures – ducks in the park, things like that. I don’t need to see everything they do. I don’t like sitting down too much. I’d prefer to do more gardening or housework, and have more energy to spend on my exercise bike.
I worry about the time I spend on my phone. I just get carried away reading messages from people – sometimes it seems as if they have nothing better to do. Also, I don’t like all the adverts and posts from people you don’t know on Instagram – I don’t know why they appear. The family don’t really comment on me using the phone – my son and granddaughter say I use it a lot, but they prefer that I’m active on it. It keeps us in touch. CM
Daily screen time
Phone 3 hours
Computer None
TV 2 hours
* * *
‘I am very strict about not looking at the comments any more’
Pippa, 29: the priest who’s big on TikTok
As a priest, I do see far more phones in church than you might expect. Luckily, my parishioners are very well trained, and I’ve never caught one scrolling during a service so far. But I have had funerals where people’s phones go off – you think, “Come on!”
I’ve been making TikToks for about 18 months. It was my sister who suggested it and at first I was hesitant. We had TikTok accounts and watched other people’s content, but I’d never considered making my own. She said, “You should be a TikTok vicar!” but I thought it would be naff. Besides, in the first half of my curacy I was in a village and I wasn’t sure I’d find enough material. When I moved to my current church in a town, it seemed there was more of a buzz to tap into, and I softened to the idea. As a priest, I don’t think I should sit in church saying, “Well, where is everyone? Why haven’t they come to church this week?” This is a response to me thinking, “OK, where are people? How can I go and engage with them?”
To start with, it took me hours to film and edit each one, but it’s a pretty slick operation now. One of the first TikToks I made showed me at a Ministry of Sound event on a Saturday night, then cut to me leading a service the next morning – that’s had well over 2.2m views now, and I have more than 30,500 followers. It’s always difficult to tell which ones are going to be a hit – I thought the most recent one was hysterical, so it was a bit dispiriting to check after it had been up for a few hours and find it had only had 500 views. I think that’s just human nature – with anything you’ve worked on, it’s a good feeling to have people go, “Ooooh!!” I’ve seen people suggest a good way to build your followers is to post controversial stuff, even if you don’t believe it, but I think that would be so wrong.
I am still quite bad for checking if each TikTok is getting likes and new followers, but the thing I am very strict about is not looking at the comments any more. On that Ministry of Sound post, for example, one said, “Girl, what in the lukewarm?” with a crying face emoji. “Lukewarm” was being used there as a denunciation, warning other Christians not to be like me, and that comment got close to 24,000 likes. Many people seemed to think it was a genuinely offensive thing for me to have done, though there were lots of positive comments, too. In fact, the event I went to began at 6pm and ended at nine – it wasn’t as if I was out partying all night.
There was still a story about it in the Sun, though I didn’t realise until the parish administrator messaged me with a link. I had to write an email to my bishop: “Dear Your Grace …” She was lovely about it, very supportive. I’ve since become friends with another vicar from my diocese, David Sims, who also posts on TikTok.
I do spend time scrolling through other people’s TikToks – it’s my most used app, followed by Safari, which will just be me checking my emails, then YouTube, Instagram, WhatsApp.
As a single person who lives alone, it feels like the only socialising you can do sometimes is through a screen, even if FaceTime isn’t the way you want to do it. I open my Hinge app every evening, but unless I start messaging someone, I’ll just sift through people’s profiles with half an eye. I make a point of staying off my phone if I’m with friends or my parents – not just because it’s rude not to give people your full attention, but because when you don’t share a living space with someone, you appreciate the company more. In terms of my friends, my screen time is somewhere in the middle of the bell curve. I think I have quite a low threshold for looking at them – I get a bit of a headache if I do it for too long. Maybe my eyes aren’t used to it – my sister stares at a screen all day for her work, whereas I spend a lot of time talking to people face-to-face. I can feel it when I’ve hit that time; I think, “I need to switch off now and read a book.” CB
Daily screen time
Phone Up to 4 hours
Computer 3 hours 10 minutes
TV 1 hour (plus occasional bingeing)
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‘Gaming is beneficial to my brain. It brings me some quiet’
Paula, 40: the stay-at-home mother who is hooked on phone games
For me, screen time is a release from the routine – I live on a farm with kids aged 13 and five, so every day it’s house chores, kids bouncing around, dogs barking. Gaming is my “me” time – I play a war game called Puzzles & Chaos on my phone for around four hours a day, which involves strategically building kingdoms and attacking others. I only do it when I have pockets of time – dropping one kid off, picking the other up, making a coffee.
Some friends look at me like I have two heads when I say I game. Because I’m 40, and have a busy life, they wonder why I don’t do other activities instead – but I work out every day, I’m an avid reader, and I have stacks of things to do in the house. Honestly, I don’t care what people think. I have racing thoughts 24/7. Gaming brings me some quiet. I’m challenging my brain while not thinking about other things. Sure, everything in excess is bad, but if you play the right amount of time, it’s stimulating.
I don’t spend much time doing other things on screens, apart from some TV. I have Facebook, but social media is irrelevant and gets boring. It’s just people posting the same things – food, pictures of places, or just whining. The game is strategic and much more proactive. I crave something that fills my brain up other than just doomscrolling.
I’m born and bred in Spain, where I was in the army. When I met my British husband, I left everything to build a life with him in the UK, but I don’t game because I’m lonely. I have lots of friends here. I’m just a selectively sociable person. Sometimes I make plans with friends, then two hours later I’m regretting it!
In the game I play, you can’t do anything individually, you have to join with other players to plan attacks and win points. We’ve created a community that’s amazing. My alliance is mostly women. I like that you can talk to other gamers with no judgment. Everyone has stuff going on at home – people who have lost a relative, or are recovering from an illness. We can message within the game, but can’t send screenshots, so we also use Discord and WhatsApp.
I don’t get a dopamine rush when I game, or get too hyped up. Sometimes, winning and losing battles can affect my mood, but not in a big way. My friends in the game know that real life comes first. CM
Daily screen time
Phone 4 hours
Computer None
TV 1 hour
* * *
‘My screen use became unhealthy, so I got rid of my phone’
Barnaby, 43: the tech CEO who’s deeply offline
I don’t generally look at a screen until after 10am. I’ve built “buffer time” into my mornings where I don’t have plans and don’t use any tech. I wake around 6.30am, spend time with my children, take a walk, exercise. For years, my mornings were a smartphone-induced blur – I used to be immediately checking the news, responding to emails or Slack messages. I always felt behind, even from the first minute of the day. Now, generally, the first time I engage with a screen is after I get to my office.
Even there, I work off a paper to-do list. At the end of each week I write down the top five things I want to do the following week and use that as a guide. I used to have about 300 tasks on a content management system that I’d struggle to get through, but a bout of severe depression made me reassess how I worked.
I suppose an unhealthy relationship with screens began when I started my first tech business, aged 17. It was a web hosting company. I would come home from college at 3pm and work on the business until 7am, then sleep for an hour and go back to college. By 2018 I was turning over millions with my second company,Time etc, and thought I’d cracked the code to work-life balance. Less than five years later, everything caught up with me and I had a “breakdown” of sorts. I was checking emails all day and well into the night. I was always available via instant messaging, and even when I wasn’t working I was doomscrolling the news. I became completely overwhelmed.
That was three years ago; eventually I saw I needed to get rid of my phone. I have hundreds of people who might need to contact me, so it wasn’t realistic to be completely offline, but I realised I could be more selective.
Now, I don’t browse the internet. This means no news and no social media – I might look at my phone to play music, but otherwise it’s not a big part of my day any more. If there’s an important news story, I know someone will tell me about it eventually. In fact, I’ve ended up having these beautiful, curious conversations with people. For years I was like, “Yeah, I’ve seen that” whenever anyone mentioned a news story. Now, someone will say, “Did you see the budget?” and I’ll reply, “No, tell me about it, what is your opinion?” So I have a lot more rich, human, old-school conversations about the world than I ever did before.
I only spend an hour a week on email. I don’t have email on my phone or MacBook, only my desktop. I complete as many tasks as I can in person or via a phone call.
Slack was ruining my life – constant notifications, constant buzzing, someone always needed something – so I stopped using it. At first, my anxiety was really strong – “I need to be connected because something bad might happen.” I was addicted to scanning for messages for probably 25 years, so it was hard to just let go – but nothing bad happened when I freed myself from that habit. I’ve never missed an important update, and if the fact that I’m slower to reply annoys anyone, they haven’t told me about it.
My partner is fully supportive even if I’m not always contactable. I got out of a depression directly off the back of making these changes, so it’s been a huge net positive.
I’ve found the time and space to do things with my children. My daughter and I are doing a painting project in her room, for instance – we just hang out and chat rubbish. My temper is at a different base to where it was when I was constantly behind and felt as if my phone was shouting at me from the minute I woke up to the minute I went to sleep. AJ
Daily screen time
Phone 1 hour 30 minutes
Computer Five to six hours
TV None
* * *
‘I feel shackled to my phone. Adding up the screen time is embarrassing’
Katrina, 31: the social media manager who’s always online
I’m reaching for my phone from the moment I open my eyes at 7am. I check the news, Instagram, Reddit, TikTok, X and Facebook. I scroll as I brush my teeth and get dressed. I check emails and messages as I walk to the station and more news during my commute.
At work I’m triple screening – I switch between my phone, iPad and desktop. I count this as “giving my eyes a break” – they have recently started watering at random moments and I think it’s because I focus on a tiny screen for hours each day. Bigger screens and blue-blocking glasses help my eyes relax. I’ve had other physical effects from so much screen time, too – my back hurts, my shoulders hurt, I feel as if I’m getting a buffalo hump.
Most of the time I feel shackled to my phone and it’s tragic. Adding up the hours of screentime is embarrassing, but it’s necessary in my industry. I take my phone to the bathroom so I can scroll on the toilet (I think most people do this, they just don’t admit it). And there are good parts – going viral feels amazing; waking up to a post that’s had 1m views overnight is a huge dopamine rush. In 2024, I organised a Harry Styles lookalike contest in London. It blew up, it made global news – that’s the power of social media.
Like most people who make themselves visible online, I’ve been trolled. I’ve had death threats and some really personal comments about being in an interracial relationship. I read them all, I just don’t let them bother me. If someone says something mean to me online I just think, “That’s not real, so I don’t care.”
By the end of the day my brain is fried and I feel exhausted. If I’m not working, I’ll watch a couple of hours of TV or scroll TikTok to wind down – its algorithm knows exactly what I want to see, so it’s better than television because it’s curated to my mind. TikTok also connects me with other people from my community. Around Diwali, for instance, I could see people talking about what it meant to them.
For a while I got into a habit of waking in the night to check news alerts – there was a period of rising tension between India and Pakistan which caused me a lot of anxiety. Now when I’m looking at my phone in bed, my husband will put his hands on my eyes and say, “It’s time to put your phone away.” Sometimes I just wait until he’s fallen asleep and get it back out. AJ
Daily screen time
Phone 12 hrs, overlapping with …
Computer 8 hours
TV 2 hours
