What does that screen time add up to?

Daily screen time looks small and compounds ruthlessly. Three hours a day is 46 days a year.

Daily screen time Unit

1.11 × a global average, phone

4 h is longer than 5 of the 7 references on this page.

Reference figures are measurements and are rounded; the unit conversion behind them is exact.

Every reference on this page, with its size and its ratio to your number
Reference	Size	Yours ÷ theirs	Note
30 minutes a day	0.5 h	8×	7.6 days a year
1 hour a day	1 h	4×	15 days a year
2 hours a day	2 h	2×	30 days a year
3 hours a day	3 h	1.33×	46 days a year
global average, phone	3.6 h	1.11×	3.6 hours a day
6 hours a day	6 h	0.667×	91 days a year
all screens, US adult	7 h	0.571×	About 7 hours a day

Three hours of phone use a day is 46 days a year — more than most people’s annual leave.
At seven hours of total screen time a day across a 60-year adult life, the total is about 17.5 years.

Frequently asked

Global phone use averages about 3.6 hours a day. Total screen time across all devices runs 6–8 hours in most high-income countries.

Usually not in the headline figures, which cover leisure use. Adding an eight-hour desk job roughly doubles the total.