Felice Shapiro
BUSTED
Last week I went to Seattle to visit my son and his fiancee. After observing my behavior of continuously checking my BA50 instagram, taking photos, writing notes, looking at breaking news and twitter, they sat me down.
“Mom, you need to deal with your iPhone issue. You are using it way too much…way more than millennials.”
“Ouch, Really! I put it on airplane mode on our 3 hour hike. I hid it in my bag so I wouldn’t take it out during our tour of the winery.”
“Nope, you didn’t. You took pictures, videos, showed us some funny thing you had read…you are in denial and we can prove it.”
My son Jake took my phone and showed me the new screen time feature. I had updated my phone so I now had iOS12. It had a feature that was way too revealing.
I was not happy with what I learned. How could I have logged 8 hours a day for the past week? WTF, it showed time spent on messages and on my New York Times App, Instagram and on the actual phone calls.
“Well, my phone never turns off, the screen is always on, maybe that’s the problem?” This lady doth protest.
“True,” said Jake. “You have it set to shut off after 5 minutes and I’m sure that adds up, but how about you try to reduce your hours over the next month or so?”
“Did my boy just suggest a time out period for me?”
“Fine,” I thought. “I can do this and prove that my hours will go down.”
So I started googling around to see if there was any support group out there for delinquents like me.
I read this piece in MacWorld on my addiction and apparently I’m not alone.
“We’re all spending too much time on our phones, so the argument goes, and Apple finally did its part to do something about it. In this case it’s “Screen Time,” a new feature on iOS 12 that tells you how long you’ve been using certain apps on your iPhone or iPad at its simplest, and which lets parents place numerous limits on app usage for kids at its most complex. (Or, if you feel like you’ve been spending too much time on, say, Twitter, you can place those limits on yourself.)”
So, do you think you need some help with iPhone addiction? Only your Screen Time feature knows for sure.
My suggestion, unless you are ready to make a change, don’t show your kids your hours, they may put you on a time out.