The real math of screen time
The short answer: multiply your daily app hours by 365 and divide by 24 — or, more honestly, by 16, since you don't scroll in your sleep. Two hours a day on one app is 730 hours a year: a month of days, or a month and a half of waking life. This page is just that multiplication, done so you can't unsee it.
The conversion table
| Per day | Per year | In 24-hour days | In waking days (16h) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30 min | 182 hours | 7.6 days | 11 days |
| 1 hour | 365 hours | 15 days | 23 days |
| 2 hours | 730 hours | 30 days | 46 days |
| 3 hours | 1,095 hours | 46 days | 68 days |
| 4 hours | 1,460 hours | 61 days | 91 days |
| 6 hours | 2,190 hours | 91 days | 137 days |
Read the last row again. Six hours a day — a heavy but hardly rare phone habit — is 137 waking days. More than a third of your conscious year.
Why the yearly number matters more than the daily one
"An hour on TikTok" rounds to nothing in a day. Days are forgiving; they end and reset. Years don't. The daily frame is how the time leaks; the yearly frame is what it adds up to — and no one plans their year with "23 days of Reels" as a line item.
The good news: the math runs both ways
Cut a 3-hour habit to a 1-hour cap and you reclaim 730 hours a year. That's enough to learn a language badly, a instrument passably, or do absolutely nothing on purpose — which still beats doing nothing by accident.
- Cut 30 min/day: get back 11 waking days a year
- Cut 1 hour/day: get back 23 waking days a year
- Cut 2 hours/day: get back 46 waking days a year
This is the arithmetic Capped shows you during setup — your actual last 7 days, projected to the year, next to what your new caps buy back. The multiplication is unremarkable. Seeing it attached to your own apps is not.
Frequently asked
How much is 2 hours of screen time per year?
2 hours a day is 730 hours a year — just over 30 waking-days, or roughly 45 days if you count 16-hour waking days. Either way: about a month of your year.
How many days a year is 3 hours a day on one app?
3 hours a day × 365 = 1,095 hours ≈ 46 full days a year, or about 68 sixteen-hour waking days — on that one app.
Is reducing screen time by 30 minutes a day meaningful?
30 minutes a day is 182.5 hours a year — over a full week of waking life. Small daily cuts compound into vacation-sized amounts of time.