FTWFix The Web

Your life on screens

You have less life left than you think.

Tell us your age. We'll take the years you've got left from official life tables, carve them up the way people your age really spend their days, and show you what's left once screens take their share.

25

Country

Life expectancy for

6h 23m

Set to the average at your age: 4h 30m on phones, tablets and computers, tracked on people's own devices,6 plus 1h 53m of TV.4 It follows the average as you get older. Drag it to put in yours.

Set to the average for 13 to 18 year olds: 8h 39m on every kind of screen, outside school and homework.7 Drag it to put in yours.

Set to your own number, kept the same for the rest of your life. Find it in Screen Time (iPhone) or Digital Wellbeing (Android), then add TV and games.

9%

Calls with people, learning, making things. It starts at 9%: the share of teenagers' screen time that goes on video calls, reading and making things.7

Hard to say honestly? It is. People's own guesses at their screen time rarely match what their devices logged,10 and nobody enjoys feeling guilty about it. That's why the tracker we're pushing for would measure this as you go, instead of asking you to remember.

What's left of your life

58.7 years

This is the rest of your life: 58.7 years.

You're 25. On average, someone your age in Australia lives to 83.7.1,2,3 You were 6 when the first iPhone went on sale, so 19 of your 25 years have had smartphones in them.11

There isn't enough free time for all that screen time, so 3.5 years of it comes out of meals, chores and errands.

  1. SleepIncluding naps and lying awake21.7 yrs
  2. Work and studyIncluding getting there8.3 yrs
  3. UpkeepEating, chores, errands, looking after people, getting ready, with no screen11.5 yrs
  4. ScreensPhones, computers and TV, outside work and school17.2 yrs1.6 worth it
  5. Free time off screensFriends, family, sport, hobbies, rest, with no screen0.0 yrs
  • Each square is a week. Lived before the first iPhone
  • Lived since

Warning

Screens will take 17.2 years of the life you have left

Worth it, by your count: 1.6 years. Free time away from screens: none. Want it back?

An average day at 25

  • Sleep9h 3m
  • Work and study5h
  • Upkeep3h 32m
  • Screens6h 23m
  • Free time off screens0m

Averaged over every day of the year, for everyone your age: weekends, holidays, working or not.4

Every generation

Everyone met smartphones at a different age

Someone who's 70 lived most of their life before the first iPhone. Someone who's 15 has never lived without one. Here are whole lives in Australia, to scale, from birth to the average age people get to: what's been lived so far, and what screens will take of the rest, at the average for each age.

  • Lived before smartphones
  • Lived with smartphones
  • Still to come, off screens
  • Still to come, on screens
  1. 15Born 2011. Never without smartphones. Screens will take 20.6 of the 68.5 years left.
  2. 25Born 2001. 6 years before smartphones. Screens will take 17.2 of the 58.7 years left.
  3. 45Born 1981. 26 years before smartphones. Screens will take 12.1 of the 39.4 years left.
  4. 70Born 1956. 51 years before smartphones. Screens will take 5.5 of the 17.3 years left.

Tracked, not guessed

A phone out still takes you out of the moment

Time use surveys only record what people say they were mainly doing. Scrolling at dinner, on the couch with the TV on or in bed doesn't show up, and that's where a lot of phone use happens. So screen time on this page is tracked on people's own devices, with TV on top, and it counts whenever the phone's out, not just when it's the main thing going on.

Not all screen time is wasted. A video call with your grandparents, a course, making something: that time is worth it, which is what the “worth it” slider is for. But for teenagers, it's 9% of the total.

Put in your real numbers

Why it looks like a cigarette pack

Ugly packaging works. Australia proved it.

In December 2012, Australia became the first country to sell cigarettes in plain packs: every brand in the same drab olive brown, with graphic health warnings covering most of it. The colour, Pantone 448 C, was chosen because smokers in the government's research found it the least appealing, and associated it with “death”, “dirty” and “tar”.9

And it worked. The government's review found the new packs cut smoking by 0.55 percentage points in under three years: more than 108,000 people who quit, didn't relapse or never started.8

Screens aren't cigarettes, and plenty of screen time is worth having. But the hours they take are gone just the same, and nothing makes the apps show you. So on this page, screen time is Pantone 448 C.

What we're pushing for

Put the years on every screen

Nobody can judge their screen time honestly from memory. Self-reports rarely match what devices actually log,10 and no one wants to feel guilty. The numbers need to be collected for you and put in front of you. Today they're split up by device and by company, and shown a day or a week at a time, which makes them easy to shrug off. Every phone, tablet, computer and TV should come with a tracker that does this instead:

  • Every minute counted

    Home screens, lock screen checks and flicking between apps are screen time too. Count all of it.

  • Every screen, one total

    Phone, laptop, tablet, TV and console added up together, whichever company made them.

  • Months, not days

    Your average for each app over a month or a year, and what that adds up to over the rest of your life, not just today's bar chart.

  • Rate it as you go

    A quick “was that worth it?” after a video or a scroll, so the share you actually valued is measured, not remembered. Villow already does this for YouTube.

  • In front of you, by default

    A weekly report you'll see without going looking for it, required of every operating system, with an open API so other tools can build on it.

Sunday

Screen report · last 30 days

6h 23m a day on screens

You rated 9% of it worth it. At this rate: 17.2 years of the 58.7 you have left.

What it could look like, with your numbers from above.

How we worked it out

The method, and every source

  1. Years left is the average remaining life expectancy for your age in your country's latest official life table.1,2,3 “Everyone” averages women's and men's. It's how long people your age live on average today, not a prediction for you.
  2. Each year of it is split the way people that age spend an average day, from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics' American Time Use Survey, where thousands of people a year describe everything they did the day before. It's averaged over every day of the year and everyone that age, working or not.4 It's published every year and broken down by age, so we use it for every country. It starts at 15, so 13 and 14 year olds get the 15 to 19 figures.
  3. Sleep is personal care less the 46 minutes a day people spend getting ready and looking after their health, since the survey doesn't split sleep out by age.5 Work and study is paid work and education, including travel. Upkeep is eating, housework, shopping, caring for others, getting ready, calls and admin.
  4. Screens count whenever a screen is out, not just when it's the main thing someone's doing, because a phone at dinner still takes you out of dinner. The slider starts at the average for your age. For adults that's time on phones, tablets and computers outside work, tracked on people's own devices: 6h 20m a day at 18 to 24, 3h 20m from 65, and 4h 30m for adults overall, which we use from 25 to 64 since that's what's published.6 TV at your age goes on top.4 For 13 to 17 year olds it's 8h 39m on every kind of screen outside school and homework, TV included.7 Left at the average, later years follow the average for those ages. Drag it and your number is kept for life.
  5. Free time is leisure and sport, plus volunteering and religious activities. Screen time comes out of that first. Whatever doesn't fit comes out of meals, chores and errands. It never comes out of sleep, work or school, so screens used there aren't counted at all.
  6. One thing could count twice: scrolling while the TV's on. It doesn't change the answer for most people: even if half of all TV time had a phone going too, screens would still take more than all the free time people have from 18 to 64.
  7. Worth it is your call, and only splits the screens block: it doesn't give any years back. It starts at 9%, the 49 minutes of teenagers' 8h 39m that go on video calls, reading and making things.7 Nobody has measured the same for adults.
  8. Before and since smartphones splits the years you've lived at 29 June 2007, when the first iPhone went on sale.11 We don't know how much screen time you had before now, so those weeks aren't split up, only marked.
  9. It's an average. It doesn't know your job, your health or your kids. It's here to show the scale of it, not to predict your life.

Sources

  1. Life expectancy, 2022–2024 (life tables, Australia, Table 9)Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2025Years left at each age, for women and men in Australia.
  2. United States Life Tables, 2023 (National Vital Statistics Reports 74:6, Tables 2 and 3)CDC National Center for Health Statistics, 2025Years left at each age, for women and men in the United States.
  3. National life tables: United Kingdom, 2022–2024Office for National Statistics, 2025Years left at each age, for women and men in the United Kingdom.
  4. American Time Use Survey, 2025 results: Table 3 (primary activities by age) and Table 11A (leisure and sports by age)US Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2026How people of each age spend an average day: sleep, work, school, chores, free time, and how much of it is TV.
  5. American Time Use Survey, 2025: Table A-1 (detailed primary activities)US Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2026Time spent sleeping versus getting ready, and the share of free time spent on TV, games and computers.
  6. Online Nation 2025Ofcom, 2025Time adults spend on phones, tablets and computers outside work, tracked on their own devices rather than guessed (Ipsos iris panel, May 2025), and the share of it on a smartphone.
  7. The Common Sense Census: Media Use by Tweens and Teens, 2021Common Sense Media, 2022Teenagers' daily time on every kind of screen outside school and homework, and how much of it goes on making things.
  8. Post-Implementation Review: Tobacco Plain PackagingAustralian Government Department of Health, 2016How much plain packs and bigger graphic warnings cut smoking in Australia.
  9. Market Research to Determine Effective Plain Packaging of Tobacco ProductsGfK Bluemoon, for the Australian Government, 2011Why plain packs are Pantone 448 C.
  10. A systematic review and meta-analysis of discrepancies between logged and self-reported digital media use (Nature Human Behaviour 5, 1535–1547)Parry, Davidson, Sewall, Fisher, Mieczkowski and Quintana, 2021How rarely people's own estimates of their screen time match what their devices logged.
  11. iPhone Premieres This Friday Night at Apple Retail StoresApple, 2007When the first iPhone went on sale: 29 June 2007.