Do you ever stop and think about how much of your waking hours are spent behind a screen? According to a study published in the journal Plos One most people severely underestimate the time they actually spend interacting with smartphones. The actual average time a person between the ages of 18-33 uses their smartphone per day is just over 5 hours. When asked how many times they checked their phone in a day, they said about 35-40 times. However when this statistic was monitored, it turned out that the average person was checking their phone over 85 times per day.

It’s so easy to point at usage time and say, “Screen bad. No screen good.” That’s not what I’m aiming at doing here. I know full well how vitally important computers and smartphones are to our lives. They changed the very fabric of our society. It’s nearly impossible to get through a normal day without interacting with one, and that’s okay. It’s not about limiting phone usage. It’s about ensuring that your phone usage brings value to your life.

Value in Interactions

I struggle with phone use a lot. When I use sites like Reddit and Youtube I get sucked right in and hours slip by like sand through my fingers. However whenever I stop and take time to wonder what kind of value these activities are adding to my life, I end up realizing that there really isn’t much. Of course, moderation in all things. Social media sites have the potential to add meaningful value to your life. Value that will actually enrich your experience rather than suck your time away. The variable that we need to focus on here is not the product but the user.

In his book Deep Work, Cal Newport proposes an idea that is key to understanding how to get value out of your tech. He sets forth two opposing ways to view technology: the “Any Benefit Approach” and the “Craftsman Approach.” The former explains that your decision to use a product is based on it having any benefit at all to your life. The latter explains that even if something can provide a benefit, that doesn’t necessarily mean it will be of use to you. Every app, website, or feature tells you what benefit it will add to your life. But at what cost does it come?

Twitter promises to keep you constantly connected, but at what cost? Often times we’ll end up spending hours on end “connected” when what we’re really doing is scrolling through a timeline. There’s no value in skimming a tweet and moving on, forgetting it even existed within seconds.

A valuable interaction with your phone would be using it in a way that enriches your life. The definition of “enriches your life” is different for everyone. For me, my phone enriches my life when I use it to communicate with people I care about. Even if I’m just texting casually, that still brings value into my life because I get to communicate with those most important to me. When I am able to watch Youtube in moderation, that brings value to my life because it’s a way for me to relax and maybe laugh at a few funny videos.

It’s All Up To You

Everybody’s relationship with their technology is different. Everybody’s definition of value is different. I don’t want to tell you explicitly what you should and shouldn’t do with your tech. I’m in no position whatsoever to even do that, I’m just some guy on the internet.

What I do want to do is help you define what you see to be valuable, and maybe help change your awareness of your relationship with tech from probably not thinking at all about what value your use brings to thinking about how important the things you’re doing on your phone or computer are to you and your life.

Here are 5 questions that I ask to help myself restructure the way I look at my technology:

If I changed the amount of time I spent doing this, what could I do instead? Does this bring me any joy whatsoever? If I stopped using this today, how would my life change? Does engaging in this help me learn, grow, communicate with people I care about, or relax? Moderation is okay. This isn’t a question but still an important emphasis when considering these questions.

What Is This Kid Getting At

It’s our own decision on how we use technology to make it add value to our lives. Don’t let technology control you, don’t let it dictate how you’re going to spend your day. Instead, you decide what your technology will do for you. You dictate how it will serve you.

You really don’t need to revert to the triassic period, otherwise known as any time before 2007 in order to live in harmony with technology. It’s all up to you. I will say from my own life though that making an attempt to live with more awareness of how I’m using my tech has brought me more peace of mind, more happiness, and more sense of fulfillment than before when I was allowing my tech to pull me any way it wanted. Take control, see for yourself what shifting your perspective of how you look at technology can do for you.