How Many Hours of Screen Time is Healthy?

Whether we’re working, relaxing, or connecting with others, screens have become an inevitable part of modern life as we work online, read the news, watch movies, play video games, send memes, and shoot plenty of messages back and forth. The more screens are normalized for every facet of life, the harder it is to know when we have “too much” screen time. 

After an 8-hour workday in front of a computer, would watching a 2-hour movie be considered “too much?” Is a 4-hour Mario Party Marathon already pushing the limit? Or 5 hours of Zoom meetings and video calls? Let’s find out where the boundary between healthy and excessive screen time lies and how we can use digital technology to set better boundaries with screen time.

What Is Screen Time?

Screen time is pretty straightforward: it’s the time one spends looking at a screen, from phones to computers to TVs. Our screen time covers a number of labor and leisure-related moments, but the time spent in front of screens tends to differ vastly between age demographics. Here’s how screen time varies in age and gender as of the end of 2023. 

Teenagers and young adults are spending most of their waking day staring at screens. Here’s how Americans 18+ tend to spend their leisure screen time outside of work hours:

In reading these statistics, are you surprised by these numbers? Whether these rates are higher or lower than you thought, take a look at your own screen time habits to compare what your average is. 

Despite these numbers dictating the new normal, this doesn’t necessarily dictate a healthy relationship with screen time. The rising hours of screen time across generations can have serious mental and physical health implications. 

The Health Impacts of Excessive Screen Time

The Pitfalls of Blue Light

The blue light emitting from your screen directly impacts your vision and hormones. After a long day at work, do you have headaches, gritty eyes, or blurred vision? You may be straining your eyes past what they can handle and causing early-onset myopia (nearsightedness). 

If you like watching videos at night before you sleep, you’re contributing to a lower quality of rest: Blue light stops the body’s production of the sleep hormone melatonin, resulting in a mind that feels wired at night and foggy in the daytime. Try some blue-light glasses to use during work hours, keep your blue light filters on your devices, and put away screens at least an hour before bedtime. 

The Risks of a Sedentary Lifestyle

As you’re reading this article, chances are that you’re sitting down. Increased screen time results in a more sedentary lifestyle: you’re sat at a desk for hours a day, then sat on the couch scrolling on Tiktok or watching Netflix for a few more hours. 

Unfortunately, a more sedentary lifestyle correlates with an increased risk of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. Weaker muscles can make you more prone to throwing out your back or twisting an ankle, while the posture of constant sitting often leads to chronic back and shoulder pain and carpal tunnel. 

Try using screen time as an excuse to get up and get moving. Take breaks once in a while to get up and do a 5-minute stretch. In your free time, YouTube has plenty of fitness routines for pilates, stretching, cardio, yoga, weight training… whatever you’d like. Even better, try to get out of the house for a stroll in a city park, or take a weekend trip to a State or National Park for beautiful views and fresh air. 

The Mental Toll

The more we’re online, the more our mental health declines. Adults, and especially teens, are experiencing higher rates of anxiety, depression, and stress associated with prolonged screen time. Compulsive use can lead to addictive behaviors like fierce mood swings or bursts of irritation or anger when they are away from their screen time. 

Most people nowadays use social media as their primary news source. Whether you’re doomscrolling grisly details on international genocide or getting into political fights in the comments section, most people often feel stuck to their screens or left feeling totally helpless to the onslaught of bad news, which correlates with stress and anxiety.

Social Media is often a profile’s highlight reel, complete with edited faces and figures. You may compare yourself to the friend who just won tickets to Coachella, the model with the perfect body, or the ex-classmate who has a booming business. The constant self-comparison leads to increased depression, anxiety, and social isolation.

So how much screen time should we engage in on a daily or weekly basis? Experts struggle to find a clear answer due to the prevalence of screens in the workplace, age differences, and of course, the content itself. 

Is Four Hours of Screen Time Too Much?

For children, four hours is too much! The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that children under the age of 1 should have 0 hours of screen time, and instead interact with their immediate environment and family members. The only exception is a Facetime video call with a faraway family member.

Children ages 2-5 should have under an hour a day on weekdays and no more than 3 hours on weekends. Furthermore, parents should be present with kids to engage in educational or interactive programs. 

Meanwhile, children ages 5 through teen years should stick to under 2 hours of recreational screen time on weekdays, and instead spend evenings doing activities like walks, game nights, extracurriculars, crafts, and other engaging activities. Many students may have to take online tutorials or write papers, so that can count outside the daily 2 hours. 

Parents should take care to try to limit their screen time to be just slightly more than their children’s, to model good behavior. However, many adults spend up to 7+ hours in front of screens for work. So that leads us to the next question…

Is 7 Hours of Screen Time a Day Bad?

For adults, seven hours of productive work is non-negotiable for many. However, it’s not the hours of screen time that matters as much as the content of what we are consuming. When you get home from work, are you more likely to spend an hour watching a documentary, or scrolling on your phone? 

If you’re taking an online language class, watching a crafts tutorial, reading on your Kindle, engaging with an ocean documentary, calling your long-distance best friend, or researching financial literacy, then you may consider this time well spent. Next time before you panic at the number of your weekly use, ask yourself, “Was that a waste of time?” If the answer is no, don’t sweat. 

The most important things to consider are these:

• Are you sleeping well?
• Are you eating well?
• Are you leaving the house to be social?
• Is your work going well?
• Are you physically active?

If your answer to all these is yes, then you’ll be fine. If not, it may be time to reassess your screen time habits, which you can do in the settings on your smartphone. In case you’d like to set some limits on your screen time, here are a few things you can do.

Cultivate Healthy Screen Time Habits

Out of all screen time activities, social media usage has the highest correlation with poor mental health. Try to stick to no more than an hour of social media per day. A 2018 study focused on the mental health of 143 college students found that students who changed their screen time to only 30 minutes a day on social media reported decreased symptoms of loneliness and depression.

Another study found that people who spent no more than 30 minutes a day tended to be the least lonely, most connected, and happiest than people who were completely off social media, or compulsively online. 

Dedicate three to four hours a day to be completely free of screens. This is the perfect time to take a ceramics class, grab dinner with your cousin, host a game night, hit the gym, and create a garden… the options are truly endless, especially when you’re boosting your social interaction and physical activity.

However, limiting screen time at the beginning may feel nearly impossible. Setting app timers on your phone is often too easy to opt out of, but luckily, digital wellness technology is here to help. 

Freedom is a digital wellness app that can help you accomplish your boundaries with screen time. You’ll be able to create a digital blocklist of all the websites and apps that you can’t stay away from, and then schedule a one-time or recurring Block Session to keep you from accessing that site. 

Want to make sure you don’t drift to X when you’re trying to get work done? Easy, add X to a “Work Time” blocklist that is on from 9-5 on both your phone and work computer. Want to try to limit content that makes you feel it is a waste of time? Add it to another blocklist for after-work hours. Freedom has other helpful features. When you want to put away YouTube or Netflix before bed, try Freedom sounds instead to drift off peacefully.

Take Back Your Screen Time

While we’re logging in more screen time than ever, you don’t have to become a slave to the screen and let your health suffer. With the help of apps like Freedom, you can actually honor healthy time limits with screens and ensure that you’re consuming content that inspires and encourages you to live a well-balanced life. 

Written by Lorena Bally