Why I’m proud of my excessive “screen time”

‘Screen time’ is a buzzword, most often used by professionals and websites telling people how they are bad parents when their children get too much of it. Little Mister does not do a ton of screen time at home, however I question whether these experts who pooh-pooh ipads for kids have ever tried to get dinner on the table at a reasonable hour, eat a meal at a restaurant while it was still hot, or just wanted 1 hour to get the grocery shopping done without having to answer the question, “Can we get this?” 3,728 times.

Now, adults are being judged on their screen time. It was either with one of the latest iPhones or one of the millions of updates that I started getting these weekly “Screen Time” alerts, where my phone would scold me tell me how much time I spent on my phone in the past week.

(by the way, that “5:41” at the top is AM folks, not PM)

I spend a lot of time on my phone.

I am an early riser. I mean EARLY. (Don’t even get me started on Daylight Savings Time, when for the past 2 days I’ve basically woken up in the middle of the night).

And when I wake up, I need something to do to occupy my mind and time that is not loud or disruptive. Sometimes I read. But most times, I’m on my phone, scrolling, researching, planning.

Sure, I’m catching up on social media and reading articles that Facebook thinks I’ll like, and mentally shopping all of the goodies I see on Insta with the #targetdoesitagain.

But these early morning hours, these are the hours I’m most productive.

Here are some of the things I accomplish while the world still sleeps:

• Catch up on all my emails that came in the night before
• Check my calendar and mentally plan out the morning, and my day at work
• Sign up for exercise classes for the upcoming days/week
• Organize my photos and upload them to Shutterfly
• During the holidays, get inspiration for gifts and make lists
• Shop! I’m Amazon’s best customer before the sun comes up
• Peruse family vacation houses
• Make a grocery list
• Research anything that Mr. KK and I have been taking about in the last few days: recipes for Thanksgiving, activities for the Little Mister, the new brewery opening up
• Secretly look up and price out beach vacations
• Silently LOL at the funniest things parents tweeted for the week on HuffPo

Of course, when Mr. KK finally wakes up, it’s likely I’ve been on my phone for a few hours by that point, so he barely has an eye open when I start bombarding him with questions, showing him recipes and asking him to look at the 37 links I texted him while he was sleeping.

Hey, if I’m going to be awake, I’m going to be productive.