I am completely and utterly ashamed about how much time I spend on my phone. I feel shameful even sharing the amount of time I spend on my phone because it is such a disgustingly large amount of time.

A few weeks ago I got a new phone and whilst setting it up I decided to turn on the screen time thingy-ma-bob. I’m not sure why I did it, I just clicked it and forgot about it.

From the weekly reports my phone has since sent me, I was able to discern: my phone usage is unhinged.

“Last week you spent an average of eight hours per day on your phone.”

Eight fucking hours.

On my phone.

Eight hours lost to the void.

Each day!

The shame response I went through was intense, I immediately panicked, wanted to vomit and deleted everything off my phone that I felt was the cause of this ridiculous number. I texted Nicholas (I was at work at the time) stating I have a problem with my phone, I am disgusting little human and I hate myself right now. Who, of course immediately told me he loved me and to take a breath.

I have been glued to my phone since I started my first business, a flower studio, at 20 years old and needed to keep content flowing out of my Instagram, as 80% of my customers came to me via social media.

However, back then I was so consumed with my business and making it grow into a success. That I was able to largely post content, and then log back off and get on with my day. I’d check back in periodically but I never felt any kind of unhealthy relationship with the device in my hand.

This was the same through the majority of my twenties. I wasn’t really a “scroller” who lost hours doom scrolling and never really had to give my phone usage much thought.

But sometime over the past few years I’ve gone from not really paying my phone that much attention to being on it, for well, eight hours a day.

I don’t even spend that time exclusively on social media. 90% of that screen time is spent playing games.

I’m a thirty one year old woman who is obsessed with playing games on her phone.

That makes me feel incredibly sad.

To further compound the already negative feelings I had, Instagram showed me a post from someone who’s post was all about how much time she spent on her phone and her subsequent awakening, and how she now digitally detoxes and is perfect (I’m being a bit sarcastic and unfair here, I’m sure that wasn’t the message she was attempting to send)

At first I was like, ok there are others out there like me, I’m not a digitally obsessed weirdo but then I read the caption. Where she stated at her worst she spent three hours a day on her phone and how many years in a life time this equated too.

I threw my phone down in a bit of a tantrum. Three hours!? TRY EIGHT HOURS WOMAN ON THE INTERNET I DON’T KNOW. TRY EIGHT HOURS.

It is - of course, not the fault of the stranger on the internet. How much time a person feels comfortable (or uncomfortable) spending on their phone is their own prerogative and will be subjective to them and their inner world.

However, at the time, I’m able to admit, it made me feel shitty.

I have, since this whole phone usage saga, tried to implement screen time limits. I do however find it exceptionally easy to just click “ignore limit for today” and carry on with whatever I was doing on my phone, so that’s not the answer for me.

All I’ve managed to do since this, is be more intentional with my phone time - I won’t pretend that I’ve magically fixed the problem, because I haven’t. My phone time is still extremely high but I have managed to feel a little more in control of it and decrease my times slightly.

I’ve struggled, however, to do this when I’m at home.

So, to give you an idea of my weekly schedule: I work four 12 hour night shifts per week (6.15pm to 6.15am, with an hours commute each way). I work three shifts, then I have three days off and then I do another three on and on, and on it goes.

At work, I’ve massively reduced my phone time. Working for the ambulance service you probably wouldn’t imagine you’d spend much time on your phone as you’d be too busy saving lives but in reality most of the time in a 12 hour period you might take anywhere from 20 to 50 calls, most of the time it’s on the lower end of that scale and so you have a lot of “free time” when you are waiting for a beep to sound in your headset to alert you that you’re now on a phone to someone who requires an ambulance. So with this in mind, it was actually pretty easy to spend quite a few hours on your phone during the 12 long hours.

I try to keep my phone in bag and instead spend my time between calls reading my book, chatting to colleagues, doing puzzles or reading/writing on Substack. And it hasn’t been too tricky.

It’s when I’m at home, and I feel restless but too tired to actually do anything that I struggle. I don’t currently have the attention span to sit and watch a TV programme without playing a game on my phone, I get too fidgety.

I suspect that when my stress levels lower and my mental health improves my phone usage will decrease but of course the proof will be in the pudding.

I’ve now handed my notice in at work and am mere weeks away from moving into our van full-time with my partner. I am very much hoping that I can switch eight hours on my phone for eight hours spent outside.

I’m not sure if this is silly or not: I have a list of things I used to love to do as a kid that I want to start doing again to try to rediscover that innate curiosity and excitement we all had as children.

This list includes:

• Splashing about in the water. How long can I hold my breath under water? Can I beat my own record? Snorkelling and looking for fishes and pretty things. Learning to do a dive and quite literally just splashing about, floating on my back looking at the sky.

• Practising cartwheels and handstands. I spent hours as a child throwing myself upside down, going to see if I can do this again as an adult.

• Playing fetch with the dogs (good exercise too as neither are very good at actually bringing the ball back to me)

• Reading (of course. I loved Narnia and otherworldly stories as a kid so thinking of leaning into fantasy books)

• Ball games! Nicholas is always pestering me on the beach to play ball games with him, so I shall make an effort to say yes and try to last more than five minutes.

• Looking for bugs!! I loved to stomp around and look for bugs that I could later identify in one of my many animal encyclopaedia when I was small. I get excited seeing dogs so I’m sure I’ll find lots of joy in this one. I’m going to order some animal spotting guides and get some bird feeders for the side of the van. Bird watching = the adult version of bug hunting (I will still definitely look for bugs too)

• Cloud spotting! Did you ever lay on your back and look at the clouds and try to spot different shapes and things? Look, that one looks like a dinosaur chasing a sheep!!! That kind of thing.

• Foraging. Nicholas is keen to try to incorporate more ingredients that he’s foraged so I will join him on these trips. I’m very intrigued by mushrooms so maybe I will try to learn about many different types.

• My adult version of Ispy. I like to call “I would live in that house and my life would look like…” and I continue to imagine an entire new life for myself based on the front of a particular house or building. It makes walking through built-up areas way more fun.

• Physical games: scrabble, cards, uno etc.

I could go on, but I won’t because it’s likely to get boring. However, I’ve been adding and adding to this list because I’d like a big list of activities so every time I go to pick up my phone I can think “I could play a game or I could pick something off the list and try that instead… and then maybe later go on my phone if I still want too”

The rule on our previous van trips has always been no phone time whilst we are having TV time. We unintentionally, without ever actually explicitly setting the rule, found that we liked to be more engaged in both the film being watched and each other. I found when doing this that I ended up feeling sleepier and going to bed earlier because I wasn’t lost in my phone.

I’m going to try and continue this, which should be easy because I won’t have a lot of data on my phone so it will need to be used wisely because unlike my screen-time limit, I can’t just press a button and top it up. It would require driving to a shop that sells local sim cards with data on it.

I’m not entirely sure what the point of this post was, I guess I just wanted to share this experience as I both fear I am completely alone in this and that I’m also not alone and many people struggle with this.

Speak soon,

Love Saph xxx