Girl With 5 Hour Daily Screen Time Simply Does Not Have Time To Read Class Material

This is a really busy time in the semester. Midterms, homework, the stressful transition from your summer to fall wardrobe - it all piles up quickly. This makes it difficult to effectively manage your time between academics, extracurricular activities, your social life, and your screen addiction. Hanna (C ‘24) has been struggling with this exact problem. 

“My major is in the humanities, which means we get assigned lots of reading. And I mean lots - like, 20 pages a week. I don’t know how I can be expected to read all of that material when I also have to dedicate at least five hours a day to mindlessly scrolling through my phone.”

We checked Hanna’s daily screen time, and it was indeed five hours minimum each day, jumping as high as seven hours and thirty-seven minutes on weekends. She even has her phone usage scheduled into her planner. When asked if she is somehow using her phone to read her course materials, or maybe type assignments, she laughed and said her phone is used for “much more important things.”

“When I wake up I have to go through and check all my notifications, plus do a little light scrolling through Instagram and Twitter. That’s an hour right there.” 

Hanna’s usage is conveniently broken down in the ‘Screen Time’ section of her iPhone’s settings, a feature that the UN says violates its conventions against psychological torture and humiliation. Hanna can therefore track just how much time she spends on her phone, and which apps she uses the most. We reviewed these analytics with Hanna and discovered that she spends at least 20 hours a week on social media apps like Instagram and Twitter. While some would have their self-worth damaged by this discovery, Hanna did not seem fazed.

“The time I spend on social media is actually a marketable skill. I’ve spent so many hours scrolling through Instagram that I have their algorithm completely figured out.” 

This turned out to be true - despite Hanna’s suffering grades and lack of participation in her classes, she has already secured a job for next summer as a social media intern at her dad's friend's company. Have you found your summer internship yet?