Does anyone have any insight into how best to track time spent on specific social media apps through time on iOS? I know you can go to “screen time” on the iPhone and it will show how much time you’ve spent within various categories, and “social media” includes messaging. You can tap into that and see the detail, but unless I’m missing something, you can’t see much historical data. I’d like to be able to see average time spent by day / week / month for specific app categories and specific sites within each category. This seems like a no-brainer and pretty key to good health / wellness, so would like to see this data.
The cynical side of me can understand why Apple would limit the functionality so as to keep us addicted to our phones, but I’m hoping there is a way to get at this insight. I’ve set goals on social media usage and I’d like to be able to track them without having to go into the screentime app every week.
Using the web version of LLIF.org software (found at my.llif.org) you can upload data takeouts from Facebook, Netflix, and Google/Youtube, and see how you’re spending online activity.
We don’t cover all social media outlets yet, and we’re working on an active sync instead of using a data takeout. LLIF.org provides this as a nonprofit, so your data is protected as a donor-related asset when you use the software!
Here’s a video made a while back that demonstrates how to use the my.llif.org web dashboard and the companion mobile app in case the takeout instructions aren’t helpful enough.
If you life the software and have an opinion on what social media platform we should work to integrate next, please let us know.
A peak into our future plans, we’re working towards an extension for browsers and other devices that would let you track where you spend your time online and gain better insights from that data.
You could take a look at ActivityWatch (https://activitywatch.net/) it’s cross platform (although I’m unsure if it works in iOS).
Plus it offers customizable widgets to view your data and it’s open source and your data does not leave the device (which is something everyone should seek for, specially in a service with such sensible data)!
