It’s too late to stop now –

April 26, 2020 – But screen time is essentially mandatory for many Garden State residents right now. Working from home can mean checking emails and text messages on one’s phone several times per hour, while their kids go to “school” on a tablet in the living room.

Since the start of the pandemic, telecommunications company Comcast has seen a 57% increase in daily log-ins to to Xfinity XFi, a digital dashboard to help customers manage their home WiFi network. Among those who use the dashboard to track how much time their kids are online, the median “active time alert” set on weekdays has increased from 3 to 4 hours per day.

Since March 9, the dashboard has seen a 213% increase in WiFi being paused during the lunchtime hours of 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. The ability to pause WiFi is the most popular feature on the program.

“As much as you are on is as much as you should be off,” Andrew Green, a licensed clinical social worker with the Mental Health & Addiction Wellness Center in Lakewood, said of technology usage.

@NJ1015