Taylor Lorenz’s Screen Time Is Almost 17 Hours a Day

Taylor Lorenz doesn’t want to touch grass. The technology and culture journalist wrote the bestselling book Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet, and she has the screen time to prove it. Previously a reporter for mainstream media outlets, Lorenz built such a rabid following (and a legion of haters) that she decided to go independent in 2024. Now, almost 100,000 fans subscribe to her newsletter, User Mag, for her insider knowledge of virality and her freakish ability to contextualize how internet culture shapes, well, everything.

For our very first User Behavior, Lorenz defends her extreme digital diet, revealing how she’s first to the AI slop, what it takes to run a meme page, and why she’s not worried about any of this rotting her brain.

Phone model: iPhone 15 Pro

I’m waiting for a decent upgrade. I'll upgrade when I get a better camera. I'm friends with an influencer marketing person at Apple, and I've never gotten a single free product out of it. It's a disappointment. I'm not big-time enough to make it on the gifting!

Computer model: 2024 MacBook Pro, 14-Inch

Standard. Good computer. When I was quitting my job, I thought, what's the closest to my work computer? And I bought that. Also, I edit video. So I need a little more horsepower.

Average screen time across all devices:

My iPhone screen time is around 10 hours or something. I am sort of horrified, but the thing is, for some reason, writing is less stressful to me on my phone. So I often write the first draft of everything on my phone. I am using it for work; I'm not just on brain-rot Instagram Reels.

I also like to listen to background noise all day, because I hate the silence of downtown LA. I just always have music on. And so my two most used apps are Spotify and YouTube. At night, I like to watch Netflix on my phone because I'm still on my family plan and I can only add so many devices.

I think caring about screen time is stupid. It's a waste of mental energy. I actually think this whole moral panic over screen time is going to be gone in 10 years, because everything's going to be integrated into the world around us already. If you're talking to an AI agent all day and just telling it what to do and interacting with it, you're not going to have to look at a screen. You'll probably just be speaking to some pod in your ear.

Music app: Spotify, Hype Machine

I think I’m one of the last remaining users of Hype Machine, which was really popular during the bloghouse era. It started in 2005 as a way to discover MP3 blogs. I think I started using it in 2010, and I feel like I discover lots of new music on there and also they have remixes and stuff. It's honestly the best, and everybody needs to support them. I'm constantly concerned about them going out of business, because they're just from the indie internet a long time ago.

I don't like the AI playlist and the AI-ification of music recommendations. I like to be given music that I would've never found before. I like the discovery aspect of Hype Machine, because it's curated by bloggers, and there are still music bloggers out there, and they're finding stuff that I wouldn't have found otherwise.

Number of unread emails: 15,607

I don't believe in Inbox Zero. You kind of just have to treat email as a newsfeed or a Twitter feed—you're going to miss some stuff, but you can't worry about it. You just have to let it go and check in on it sometimes. A lot of people's stress about technology is feeling like they have to complete things or optimize, and I'm just like, whatever. If I see it, I see it. If it's really urgent, someone will find a way to reach me.

Number of unread texts: 712

I don't have any anxiety about any of it. Who cares? There's this whole industry built on making you check your phone and making you feel like you have to check your phone. Now that I'm self-employed, I don't have a boss telling me to check my email. It's the only way to live.

Favorite social network: X

Ugh, I’m a sicko. X is a terrible right-wing propaganda platform that Elon Musk has bastardized. But I love real-time information, and there just is no other platform that provides real-time information at scale. If you want to follow what's going on in Silicon Valley, you’ve got to be on X.

Least favorite social network: Threads

Threads is absolutely a bizarro world of some of the least media-literate people I've ever encountered. It’s truly just a giant soup of misinformation and delusion.

Favorite tech product: 15-foot iPhone charging cord

I have these cords everywhere. Any room that I'm in, I bring it. I don't like to feel tethered. It's so humiliating to have to sit next to an outlet and charge your phone.

Number of burner accounts: unknown

I just make them all the time. The only way to understand a community or trend or phenomenon, you have to get in there.