Knowingly or unknowingly, we spend hundreds of hours looking at our phones every year. Have you ever looked at how many hours you spend on your phone every day, every week, or every month? Today we discuss how to see screen time on android.
The mobile phone could be the most used device by humans in all human history. By 2021, there are more than 3 billion mobile phone users and it keeps increasing. With mobile phones becoming cheaper and getting new features every year, millions of people buy their first mobile phones. However, while getting connected is good, people are slowly getting addicted to their mobile devices. Their lifestyle is changing and for many people, this is not good.
Screen time and Digital well being
To reduce the impact of this, the concept of “Digital well-being” was introduced. This simply means measuring and monitoring how much time we spend on our devices per day. The metric which is used to measure this is called “Screen time”. Screen time is the time which you have turned your display on during a day. By looking at screen time we can roughly get an idea about how much time we spend using our mobile devices. Indeed, this is not a 100% accurate measure, but this measure is effective and gives a good idea about how to limit mobile phone usage.
See your screen time on Android from the settings
Digital well-being setting is a setting on the latest android devices. You can go to that setting and monitor your screen time. You can analyze screen time by the app, the time of the day, and many other things. There are some other features given by these settings too.
Screen time on Android
To see screen time,
- Go to settings
- Go to Digital well being and parental control
Now you can see the screen time as of today in Hours and minutes. Click on it to show more to go to the dashboard where you can see more metrics in detail.
In the dashboard, you can see the following details
Date: The date on which the screen time is shown. You can change the date and compare the screen times
Most used apps: This a list of apps that are most used by you in descending order. You can see how much time you have spent using each app in front of the app name.
Notifications received: you can see how many notifications you have received and from which apps they have received.
Unlocks: you can see how many times you have unlocked the phone.
These metrics give you full detail about your digital behaviour. If you are checking your screen time for the first time you should be surprised how much time you spend on your phone. For most users, this could be around 4 hours.
How to reduce screen time on android
If you are shocked by the screen time after seeing how much you spend on your mobile phone, you might want to reduce it a little bit so you can spend that time doing some other things. So here are a couple of ways to reduce screen time.
Set a goal option
You can set a screen time goal. You can do this in the screen time dashboard in the Digital well-being settings. Go to digital well-being settings and open the dashboard. Near the screen time chart, you could see a small button named “set a goal”. You can set a goal and it will show you how much time you have spent on the device and how much time you have remaining to archive the goal. Once you have reached the goal you will get a notification.
Set App timers
If you look closely, you can recognize a couple of apps that use your time extensively. This could be social apps like Facebook, Instagram, or an app like YouTube, some people even like playing mobile games for hours. Once you have recognized the apps which you heavily use, you can set timers to remind you about the usage. Follow the steps to set up app timers.
- Go to digital well being settings
- Scroll down to find “App timers”
- You can see the list of apps sorted by the time you use them. Click on the app in which you want to set the timer.
- After you open it, it will show the average time you use the app weekly. Below the chart, you could see the “ App timer” icon.
- Click on it and set a time and click done.
The phone will calculate how much time you spend on that app and send you a reminder.
App timers provided by apps
You can set app timers using the app itself in some apps. This option is available on Facebook. You can set an app timer to Facebook to remind you that you have spent this much time on Facebook.
Focus mode
One of the major reasons we need to reduce our screen time is that when we are hooked on our phones we lose the time to do any other work. Also, it is hard to do focus on something, especially studying when the phone is around. To overcome these troubles you can set up a focus mode that helps you to stay away from the phone
To set up focus mode,
- Go to digital well-being settings.
- Scroll down to focus mode.
- Now you can see some focus modes are already set, such as “ work mode”. you can either set one of them or create a new one.
- Click on the mode you want to activate.
- Now you can see a list of apps you can use during that mode. By clicking edit you can select some other apps which you want to add.
- Click on “ Start” to start focus mode.
Once the focus mode is enabled, your phone will be locked. You will be only able to use the apps you selected until you turn off the focus mode. And it will also show you how much time you have been on the focus mode.
Do not disturb mode
Do not disturb mode is a mode that is designed to reduce phone notifications. When this mode is enabled you will not get any alerts other than calls. All your messages and other notifications will receive on your phone but there will be no alert. When you turn off do not disturb mode you can see all the notifications as usual.
Measuring and reducing screen time is very important since if we get addicted to our mobile phones it may lead to some serious troubles. To reduce screen time you may need some commitment. Most of the time we use mobile phones extensively to get out of boredom. So it’s better to give priority to other activities, reducing the screen time.