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How much screen time per year?
Enter your daily screen time, then the share you actually chose. Everything is calculated in your browser, nothing is sent anywhere.
Your exact figure is in Settings › Screen Time (iPhone) or Digital Wellbeing (Android).
The rest is reflex: your hand reaching for the phone with no decision behind it.
Over one year
you chose
on reflex
What you could get back
If naming your intention before opening cut your reflex time in half. An illustrative assumption, not a promise: nobody can measure this for you.
Method : daily time × 365.25, converted into 24-hour days. The chosen / reflex split uses your own estimate, it is not measured. No judgement in the result: the point is to name that time, not to score it.
Source for the distribution : Baromètre du numérique, 2025 edition, conducted by CREDOC for Arcep, Arcom, CGE and ANCT (4,066 respondents surveyed between 5 July and 6 August 2024). The question covers all screens for personal use, not the smartphone alone, so your phone-only figure will sit in a lower bracket than your true all-screens total.
Where to find your real screen time
Guessing from memory is almost always wrong, and wrong in the same direction every time: we underestimate. The exact number is already on your phone, and it takes thirty seconds to find.
On iPhone
- Open Settings, then Screen Time.
- Tap See All App & Website Activity.
- Pick the Week tab rather than Day, and read the daily average shown at the top.
On Android
- Open Settings, then Digital Wellbeing & parental controls.
- The dashboard shows time per app and how many times you unlocked the phone.
- The exact path varies by manufacturer and Android version. If you cannot find it, search for "wellbeing" in the settings search bar.
Take the average over a full seven days, weekend included. A single day tells you nothing: one train journey, one evening alone or one intense work day is enough to double it or flatten it. The weekly average is the number to put into the slider.
What this number measures, and what it doesn't
Screen time counts the minutes your screen is on with an app in the foreground. That's it. It draws no distinction between:
- an hour of work in a notes app;
- an hour on a video call with someone who matters to you;
- an hour of GPS directions during a house move;
- an hour of scrolling you remember nothing about.
Those four hours are strictly identical to your phone. They are obviously not identical to you. That's the fundamental limit of every screen time counter, including this one: they measure a duration, not an experience.
So why look at the number at all? Because it gives you an order of magnitude, and an order of magnitude is enough to prompt a question. Fifty days a year is information. It is not a verdict.
Why the total matters less than the split
Two people at three hours a day can be living completely different lives. The first calls her sister, reads, listens to podcasts while walking, runs her work from her phone. The second opens the same app forty times, two minutes each time, without ever deciding to.
Same number, same score, two realities with nothing in common. That's why the second slider exists: the useful question is not how much, but how much of it you chose.
And no system setting measures that, because it cannot be read from usage data. It can only be answered in the moment, at the exact point where your hand reaches for the phone. That is precisely where pourquoi.app asks its question.
Cutting the total isn't the goal
Most tools in this space assume less is better, and offer blocks, quotas and limits. Anyone who has tried them knows the problem: you work around the block, then feel bad about having worked around it. You have added guilt without removing any of the time.
The reasonable goal isn't hitting a number. It's that the time you spend on your phone is time you decided to spend. Three chosen hours beat an hour and a half you didn't choose.
Frequently asked questions
- Is the calculation reliable?
- The yearly projection, yes: it's a multiplication by 365.25 and a conversion into 24-hour days. The chosen / reflex split, no: that's your estimate, not a measurement. It is worth exactly as much as your honesty with yourself, which is already a lot.
- Is there a national average for phone screen time?
- There is no official figure for the smartphone alone, despite the many articles quoting "3h47" or "4 hours" with no verifiable source. The two serious measurements available cover something else: the Baromètre du numérique reports a self-declared distribution across all screens for personal use, and Médiamétrie measures time spent online, a little over 3 hours a day in 2025, with 80% of it on mobile. Neither is equivalent to the number your phone displays. That's why this page places you in a bracket rather than against a false average.
- Is my data sent anywhere?
- No. Everything is calculated in your browser. There is no account, no form and no upload of your figures to a server. You can go offline and the page still works.
- How much time can you really get back?
- The figure above rests on a deliberately simple assumption, reflex time cut in half, and is not a measured result. It is there to give an order of magnitude, not a promise. What is verifiable is that you cannot reduce a habit you have never identified as one.
- What counts as reflex use?
- It's the opening that comes before the decision: reaching for the phone during a lull in a conversation, at a red light, between two tasks. You usually don't remember deciding to, because there was no decision. That's the gesture the question interrupts.
- Do I need to install an app to use this calculator?
- No, it works as-is and it will stay that way. pourquoi.app is one possible answer to what the calculation reveals, not a toll gate in front of it.
A question before the reflex.
When you open an app, pourquoi.app asks why. In a second, you name your intention: the reflex becomes a choice.