What’s the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning? If it’s checking your phone, then you aren’t alone. We collected screen-time data from anonymous students at Urbana High School, and quickly one thing became clear: our phones take up a huge part of our day. Most students reported spending between 5 and 8 hours a day on their phones. Some students went far beyond that, with screen times reaching 10, 14, and even close to 19 hours in a day. An entire day spent on a screen. Averaging the data, students spend about 7.5 hours per day on their phones.

This doesn’t seem so bad when you consider there are 24 hours in a day, and you spend only 8-9 of it asleep. This adds up to 225 hours per month, and that equals out to 9.4 full days every month. This means that students spend over a week of every month on their phones alone. While phones aren’t necessarily a negative thing, they come with detrimental effects to our health: Less sleep, shorter attention spans, more stress and anxiety, and fewer face-to-face conversations (Nature Article). While phones do help us stay connected, learn new things, and relax, one-third of our month is spent on our screens, so it raises an important question: What are we giving up in exchange?

This article isn’t about quitting phones or deleting social media forever; that’s an impossible task. It’s about awareness. Checking screen-time reports, setting limits, or even putting phones away during meals or before bed can help create a healthier balance. Phones are a big part of our lives, but they shouldn’t be our life. When you turn off your screen-time analytics because the numbers shock you, there’s an issue. So the next time your weekly screen-time notification pops up, if you have it on at all. Don’t swipe it away. It might be telling you more than you think.