How Much Do You Use Your iPhone?

Some of you might remember my article about parental controls on the iPhone and younger users. Kids are using phones younger and younger, for all kinds of reasons. For me, the most important aspect of phone usage and the kids is teaching them how to use their phone or iPad safely, and to be aware that they can be overused. In our house we have strict limits on the content they can use freely on their devices, the amount of time and where they use the devices. I’ve got some tips on how to track usage on your devices and these tips aren’t just for kids! Many of us could benefit from knowing a little better just how we use our phones. I will openly admit I’m someone who checks their phone before getting out of bed in the morning. It started out as just checking e-mail and getting a jump start on my day, very logical. But fast forward several years and it’s become a morning ritual and it’s expanded beyond just seeing what tasks I need to tackle that day.

We all have probably looked at our battery usage on our phones. This handle little feature tells you what funtions and apps on your phone are sucking your battery life, but it doesn’t paint a full picture about what’s really going on with how you are using your device. I recently came across an app called Moment which allows you to track the amount of time and how the device is being used. It’s a great way for everyone to see exactly how they are using apps.

Most people underestimate how much time they spend on their iPhones but knowing how much time you do spend is the first step toward using your phone intentionally, rather than as a conduit to a constant stream of social media updates, email messages, and quick-hit entertainment.

Once you install Moment, it starts tracking your usage immediately, although once per week you’ll need to take screenshots of Settings > Battery so Moment can figure out how long you use each app. The next step, is to forget you have this app installed so that it can gather some data. I suggest waiting several days before your first peak.

On the main Screen Time screen, Moment shows how much time you’ve spent on your phone today, along with a scrolling bar graph of how much time you spent every day since you installed Moment. Don’t get too hung up on these raw numbers, though, since Moment tracks every second the screen is on. You probably aren’t concerned about time spent reading an ebook or working out with an app that talks you through a routine.

To view both a breakdown by the app and a timestamp for each time you picked up your iPhone, tap any day’s entry, and to see how much you use a particular app on average, tap it in the day view. You can answer a Yes/No question about whether you’re happy with how much you use the app, which informs the Time Well Spent aggregate data about which apps people are and are not concerned about.

All this is helpful, but for a more useful overview, tap Insights and then Week. You’ll see graphs of your usage patterns for screen time, waking life, pickups, most used app, and sleep (this depends on your first and last pickups of the day, so take its data with a grain of salt). Tap any graph to see more detail, but wait until you’ve used Moment for a while.

This app is great, but I will warn that to get the most out of it you will have to pay. It would be up to you if feel you want to learn more about usage and where helping your kids ( or yourself ) to evaluate your use over time. You have the option of a one time fee of $3.99 that will let you exclude certain apps from the data, helpful if you’re trying to track app usage that is more for entertainment versus how long you might spend on e-mail or reading a book. You can set daily limits and even do a 14-day boot camp course if you’re really trying to break away more from your phone. There is also a fee for a family plan that lets you monitor the whole family and do things like enforcing limits you might have set for the family.

Give it a try and with warmer weather finally here, it could be the perfect app to help you enjoy time in a different way.