Esther McCarthy: I spent 9 hours and 59 minutes on a single app last week
My house has often devolved into arguments about screentime, and I am far from immune to the doomscroll
I don't know if you can relate, but the main arguments in our house (at the moment) are about screen time. I worry about my kids being plugged in too much.
Two have phones, the other fella is still in the fun IRL stage and is currently working on fashioning a scooter that can go on the trampoline without tearing it, because really, two trips to the emergency department in the last couple of weeks just isn’t enough, he’s going for the hat trick.
Every time the bigger boys sit down to the table I automatically incant “get off your phone” without even looking at them. Most of the time, they’re not even on the phone and throw their hands up in the air and give out to me in between shoving seven boiled potatoes simultaneously into their gobs. When we get in the car, I whinge “put your phone away, taaalllk to meeeee”, and they’ll go “how is your day, mom?”, and cleverly get me talking about myself while their eyes glaze over and flick back to the phone hidden down by their outer thigh.
“No phones in bedrooms,” I yell, as I plug mine in next to my pillow. We have routines and timers on the 14-year-old’s device so he can’t be more than 30 minutes on TikTok. I lecture him about addiction while I make sure I don’t lose my ‘Queens streak’ on LinkedIn. (It tells me I am smarter than 95% of CEOs. I feel validated and awfully clever.) Last Monday, I got a little pop-up on my phone notification: ‘Check your weekly screentime report.’ Hmm. I click on it.
I spent an average SEVEN HOURS AND FIFTEEN MINUTES a day on my phone last week. How could that be?
Under screen time balance, there’s a message. “On average, each day while you were awake, you spent four hours 28 minutes more not using your phone than using it.” Is that supposed to make me feel better, Samsung, you pusherman? That is outrageous. So what do I spend most of my time on? Not streaming services. Not the Borrowbox library app that I turn to at 3am, mind swirling. Not my emails. Not my banking app. Not Spotify. Not even the Photos app that I use to look back on pics of when the kids were small, and the only screens I worried about were the ones on the window so the sun wouldn’t bother them in their car seats.
Maybe games app? I have about eight concurrent Crossplay games going on. Yes, I am playing games with strangers on the internet. If I found out the kids were doing it, I’d fling their device into the bin, then set it on fire, screaming about paedophile scammers wanting to sell their livers on the black market. To be fair, my liver would be worth close to nothing, but still, I am not playing by my own rules.
I am aghast to learn I spent nine hours 59 minutes on it last week. 61 notifications a day; 430 notifications in total last week; 90 app opens every day; 632 app opens total last week.
This is bad. This is really bad. If my kids find out, I am done for.
Plus, I’m old, I don’t have that many good years left, do I really want to spend it gawping at this tiny screen?
I ask my husband for his phone. His WhatsApp has 113 unread messages. I get palpitations looking at this and have to breathe into a brown paper bag. What if it’s a sports group changing venue? What if it’s a playdate invite? What if Rachel has lost her jumper AGAIN? He shrugs. I go into my Groups tab in WhatsApp. There are literally too many to count, I’m scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. There are hundreds of them. I bet you have hundreds too, but you don’t realise it. There’s the usual well-used family and friends stuff. Also though, there’s Book Club, I’ve never once been to a gathering but it’s kind of morphed into a catch-all for recommendations for sun creams, dog rehoming, and a run-don’t-walk alert for a specially selected Moldovan Rara Neagra wine in Aldi for €9.99. There’s a group called The Mad Ones (ye know who ye are), Pickleball, The UnGodlyParents, Cocktail Queeeeeeeeeens (chance would be a fine thing), The We Heart Richard Club (don’t ask), Darren 40, Bandon Rev, The Best of the Best, Cairde an Choiste, Friday Dip, Crawford Brunch Crew, (I’m haunted with fuzzy memories from that... Esther has vomited on, then left, the group), Old Farts Night Out In Clon (never happened), Wexford Wanders, Cork Finest Lightweights, Buffy Babes … they go back to May 2017. I’m not even going to go to the Updates and Communities tabs.
How could I spend that much time on WhatsApp? Am I high? Maybe I have a split personality? What in the inception is going on around here?
Maybe I should worry more about myself on the phone and not the kids. I think I’ll just get ‘hypocrite’ tattooed across my forehead and be done with it.
