I spend a lot of time on the phone. So I asked ChatGPT what’s a healthy screen-on time, and these are the four buckets I got.

✅ Low / Healthy

< 2 hours per day
Usually achievable if you’re intentional with usage. This level is associated with better sleep, focus, and mental health.

⚖️ Medium / Typical

2 – 4 hours per day
This is around the global average for adults. Not harmful by itself, but can start affecting attention span, sleep, or posture if not managed.

🔴 High

4 – 6 hours per day
Often indicates habit-driven or distraction-based use. Linked to reduced productivity and more frequent eye strain, neck pain, and mood dips.

🚨 Very High / Heavy Use

> 6 hours per day
Usually seen in people working on their phone, scrolling social media, binge-watching, gaming, or constantly checking notifications. Strong correlation with poor sleep quality, anxiety, and digital addiction markers.

When I look at my screen time for the two-week period (12th - 26th Oct), on average, I was spending more than 4 hours of screen time per day! That puts me clearly in the 🔴 High bucket. Not great. Need to rein this in.

Screen Time: 12-19 Oct 2025

Screen Time: 19-26 Oct 2025

Setting a Goal

Ideally I want to be in the ✅ Low / Healthy category, but <2 hours sounds quite ambitious. Maybe even unrealistic.
One way is to just start half way, meaning I’ll try to do less than 3 hours/day on average and see what happens. Hitting 3h/day every day might be tough. For example, if I navigate to work, on a bad day, that can be 2h screen time. If I am traveling out of town, it’s bound to be higher. A better way would be to exclude certain categories of screentime (like navigation, podcasts, music, etc). This adds more complexity.

So in the spirit of keeping it simple, setting a weekly goal of 3x7=21 hours makes more sense right now. It’s ok to miss it on a few days, but overall, at the weekly level I should be able to keep it under 21h.

Final Official Self Assigned Scientific Goal

In Nov'25, every week, do less than 21h mobile screen on time.
Or less than 3h/day on average.

Will update actuals over the next couple of weeks. Let’s go!