[swores]

It partly depends on whether "time spent on screens" is counting time where a person's attention is primarily on the screen, or time when a screen is actively directed at a person.

As a few examples from my life (I'm sure there are plenty of other such scenarios too):

- There are quite a few hours in a typical week where my phone screen is showing a video, but just because I can't have it playing in the background (eg YouTube without premium, although actually I've just installed a third party app to get around that for YT). I'm actually just listening with a wireless earpiece or two while doing something else.

- Time spent with a friend where we're sort of watching TV, but more than half the time our attention is on our conversation not on the screen.

- Time spent multitasking, whether that's doing a hobby while also watching TV, or texting people while also eating, or whatever.

Those types of things can make the difference between a certain amount of screen time being a much smaller or much bigger part of a person's day.

[blharr]

The only case I would consider this being a misleading part of the statistic would be (1), and that type of usage is probably too rare to be significant.

Multitasking "while watching TV" is probably still harmful. Just focus on the task. For me personally, having the screen there has led to increased anxiousness and loss of my sense of time.

Watching TV with a friend is probably less harmful, but its still "just" sitting in front of that screen with little activity going on.

It does kind of depend what you're watching/listening to, but humans need extended time away from that constant stream of media regardless

[swores]

I agree that the TV part isn't particularly great itself, but over the years I've had plenty of late nights with TV on ( not as many as with music, which would be my choice if at home) where I can remember conversations had but no memory of what was on the TV