Screen Time Budget — Track Daily Phone / Tablet / PC Use vs WHO & AAP Caps

Real-world use cases

• A parent settles the nightly iPad argument with one household number

  Your 7-year-old swears she "only used the iPad a little." Add it up here: 35 min iPad, 50 min phone games, 1 h of console TV. That's 2 h 25 min, well over the AAP 2 h recreational cap. Show her the donut: the console TV is 41% of the day, not the iPad she's defending. Now the conversation is about the biggest slice, not a vague "too much."

• A desk worker checks whether 8 work hours plus evening scrolling is the real problem

  You log 8 h work screen, 1.5 h evening phone, 1 h TV. The tool flags that work dominates and your non-work total is 2.5 h, under the 4 h soft target. So the fix isn't "cut Netflix"; it's the 20-20-20 rule across the work block and no phone in bed. The number tells you where cutting actually moves the needle.

• Tracking a kid's screen trend across a school week, not a single day

  One Saturday at 4 hours looks alarming. Save 7 days and the history shows Mon-Fri averaging 1 h 10 min, with weekends spiking. That pattern is normal and fine; a single panic-day is noise. The 7-day local history turns "did we blow it today" into "is the week trending up," which is the question that actually matters.

• Comparing two devices when iOS Screen Time only shows one

  iOS Screen Time reports 30 min on the iPad and you feel reassured, but the kid also had 45 min on a sibling's phone and 40 min on the Switch. Enter all three and the cross-device total is 1 h 55 min, right at the AAP line. The OS tools each tell the truth about their own device; this tool gives you the one number none of them can.

Common pitfalls

• Counting school work and video calls as recreational screen time. A kid doing 1 h of math homework on a Chromebook is not "1 h over the AAP cap." Enter recreational use only, or the number scares you for no reason.

• Judging a single day instead of the trend. One 4-hour rainy Sunday means nothing alone. Save 7 days first; a Tuesday-to-Tuesday average is the honest signal, not yesterday's spike.

• Logging only the phone and forgetting the TV and console. The whole point is the cross-device total. If you skip the 90-min console session, you've recreated the exact iOS blind spot this tool exists to fix.

Privacy