📱 Gloom and doomscrolling: In case you didn’t know, doomscrolling is when you get caught in a cycle of viewing negative posts on social media. You can set time limits for certain apps, but those are easy to bypass. I have a phone-addicted friend who has her husband hide her phone after 8 p.m. Weird but it works!
Can’t put your phone down? Here are tips to cut back on screen time
The more apps you have, the slower your phone runs and the more exposed you are to security risks. Tap or click here to run an app audit.
More apps lead to more time spent staring at our screens. Take a guess which country’s residents are most addicted to their phones? If you guessed the U.S., you’re wrong.
Where do we rank in the world?
The most serious screen addicts are South Africans, who spend 9.5 hours daily staring at phones and computers. The Japanese are at the other end of the spectrum, who have less than 4 hours of screen time daily.
Americans fall somewhere above the middle at 7.5 hours, with almost 43% of our waking hours.
A good chunk of our screen time is spent on mobile phones (21% of our day), and we can thank (or blame) Apple for revolutionizing portable internet with the iPhone.
Check yourself
The average person is awake for 17 hours per day and spends over 6.5 hours on a screen. How much time do you spend doomscrolling and browsing social media? Take a deep breath and look now.
Before you can view your app and device usage, you need to turn on Screen Time.
Set up Screen Time on iPhone
- Go to Settings > Screen Time.
- Tap Turn On Screen Time, then tap Continue.
- Tap This is My iPhone if you’re setting up Screen Time for yourself on your iPhone. If you’re setting up Screen Time for your child (or family member), tap This is My Child’s iPhone.
- To use Screen Time on all your Apple devices, scroll down, then turn on Share Across Devices.
After you turn on Screen Time, you can view a report of your device usage with information including how much time you spend using certain kinds of apps, how often you pick up your iPhone and other devices, what apps send you the most notifications and more.
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Overwhelmed by bad news? Tips to cope with endless headlines
If you’ve scrolled through the news headlines recently and have felt like everything is doom and gloom, you aren’t alone. News fatigue is real and it can take a toll on your mental health if you let it.
There’s a lot to be concerned about right now: COVID-19, endless wildfires and the potential for a disastrous flu season, for starters. These issues are dominating news cycles, so it can be easy to get caught up in reading only negative news. Looking for something more positive? Tap or click here for a show made up of only good news.