> It’s common to rack up 4 hours or more of screen time a day on your phone. Here’s one way to see the cost of that: every 20 years, you lose 5 years of your waking time looking at your phone.

This is interesting because I suspect most people use their phone while doing other things. I’m in a meeting commenting on this article with my phone. I’ve got maybe 15min a day of “I’m only paying attention to my phone” but I have 4-5 hours of phone screen time. Maybe I’m unusual though.

Seems way too common. People pull out their phone at every commercial break, lull in conversation, or stoplight. People's attention span is cooked.

You also accumulate screen time if you are using navigation while commuting, etc. I easily rack up 2 hours daily just from driving to my workplace and back home, so there are definitely some "passive" ways to increase those numbers.

I think focusing on numerical stats here is also a bit of a problem and while making these guardrails might help some people but the main issue should be addressed (overconsumption/addiction).

I wonder by reducing the screen time of the phone, how the screen time of the other devices (computer/tv/etc) changed.

Same here. I also "watch youtube" while doing chores, and the screen is on all the time, because while I mostly listen to the voice, sometimes they show things that I want to see immediately. A second use is that I'm monitoring something using my phone, so it sits around as a second screen basically.

So really, the phone is often a "second monitor".