{"id":602103,"date":"2026-04-12T13:19:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-12T13:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/602103\/"},"modified":"2026-04-12T13:19:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T13:19:08","slug":"the-screen-time-maximalists-who-spend-an-ungodly-amount-of-time-on-their-phones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/602103\/","title":{"rendered":"The Screen Time Maximalists Who Spend an Ungodly Amount of Time on Their Phones"},"content":{"rendered":"

Morgan Dreiss, a copy editor in Orlando, has severe ADHD that they say requires them to always be \u201cdoing at least three things at once.\u201d The result? A daily average screen time<\/a> of 18 hours and 55 minutes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’m reading a book<\/a> or playing a game<\/a> pretty much from waking to sleeping,\u201d Dreiss tells WIRED. What they read comes from the library app Libby<\/a>, so the books count toward overall screen engagement. Dreiss currently keeps their phone\u2019s autolock feature disabled so they can continuously run a mobile game that pays out $35 for every 110 hours logged. (They\u2019ve earned about $16 so far.)<\/p>\n

For years, studies<\/a> have brought forth worrying data<\/a> about the potential negative effects of excessive screen time on both physical<\/a> and cognitive health<\/a>. Concerns over the neural development and mental health of young people glued to their phones have led to major legislative<\/a> and courtroom battles<\/a>; recently a jury found Meta and YouTube liable<\/a> for designing their platforms with addictive features.<\/p>\n

While the question of whether one can be clinically \u201caddicted<\/a>\u201d to something like social media remains a subject of fierce contention<\/a>, there seems to be a broad consensus in this decade that people would be better off scrolling less<\/a>. On the more extreme end, there are virtual communities<\/a> that share strategies for ditching smartphones<\/a> and digital detox retreats<\/a> where no notifications can find you.<\/p>\n

Yet there are those, like Dreiss, who resist the emerging common wisdom about reducing screen time. You might call them \u201cscreenmaxxers.\u201d It\u2019s not that they necessarily have some totalizing concept of their habits; journalist Taylor Lorenz is likely in the minority of screenmaxxers eager to put the screen directly inside her brain<\/a>, as she recently confessed to WIRED. It\u2019s just that, for various reasons, they\u2019re on their devices pretty much all the time, and they don\u2019t see that as a problem whatsoever.<\/p>\n

Part of the equation, of course, is work. Corina Diaz, 45, who lives in a remote forested region of Ontario, Canada, works in video game marketing and does influencer management for a game publisher. \u201cSo, a lot of screen time,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Diaz met her husband online in 2005 and had a child three years ago\u2014her screen time increased when she was awake at strange hours because of her newborn, she says.<\/p>\n

But Diaz has sought friendships online since the 1990s, when that meant availing herself of tools like Internet Relay Chat and bulletin board systems. \u201cI\u2019ve always felt screens, phone or otherwise, connected me to things I care about,\u201d she says. \u201cIn particular, niche social groups that don\u2019t have great mainstream visibility.\u201d Now that she lives two and a half hours outside Toronto, the closest major city, her screen is \u201ca bit of a connection lifeline,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Daniel Rios is in a similar position. A computer programmer, he lives in the South American country where he grew up after having lived abroad for years. Most of his friends moved away and didn\u2019t return.<\/p>\n

As a result, Rios keeps in touch with people over Discord, his primary social outlet. Not living in a city, he doesn\u2019t go out all that much, and screens fill his days\u2014though he says it\u2019s \u201chard to quantify\u201d exactly how many hours it all adds up to. \u201cWhen I’m not working at the [desktop] computer, I’m playing at the computer or watching TV,\u201d he says. \u201cIf I’m not at the computer, I’m looking at my phone. If I’m not doing any of the above, and I’m out of the house, I’m still probably listening to something on my phone.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Morgan Dreiss, a copy editor in Orlando, has severe ADHD that they say requires them to always be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":602104,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[16555,64,63,2456,1202,514,203,10301,1314,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-602103","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mobile","8":"tag-apps","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-facebook","12":"tag-instagram","13":"tag-mental-health","14":"tag-mobile","15":"tag-smartphones","16":"tag-social-media","17":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=602103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/602104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=602103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=602103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=602103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}