Are you familiar with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs? I was first introduced to this theory while studying to be a teacher.

Maslow was an American psychologist. According to Wikipedia, his hierarchy of needs is a “theory of psychological health predicated on fulfilling innate human needs in priority, culminating in self-actualization.”

As humans we have needs, right? And our most basic needs need to be fulfilled before we can become better. Did you know that many people turn to addictive habits in order to fulfill a need? Sometimes we don’t even know we are doing it. Self-awareness is the first step to recognizing our addictive habits.

We basically took Maslow’s pyramid, turned it upside down, and simplified it, in order to create this Screen Time Check-In.

Before you spend any quality time with your smartphone, see if you can run through this list of questions to make sure you are putting your time and energy where it matters most.

And we’re working on this, too! If we were perfect, we wouldn’t have come up with this. (We created this list with our teen!)

You can print this out and put it by your charging station or take a screen shot and save it as your phone’s wallpaper to help you check-in throughout the day.

We hope these self-reflection questions help you to be more intentional about your screen time. We can do this!