Time to evaluate your screen time?

If you find yourself wasting too much of your day on your phone or tablet, here are some ideas for how to use your time and devices for something more productive — such as saving money

Apple’s Screen Time feature can tell you more about your iphone usage than you may care to know.

Like how many text notifications you receive, the number of hours you spend on social networking and how your total usage on any given day stacks up against your average.

The numbers don’t lie, but they can be surprising. If you find yourself wasting too much of your day on your phone or tablet, here are some ideas for how to use your time and devices for something more productive — such as saving money.

Check your usage

First, be honest about how many hours you spend staring at a screen.

Mike Johansson, a senior lecturer in communication at Rochester Institute of Technology, asked his students to keep track of how they spend their time.

“Over time, I had a few students who came back to me and said, ‘I was amazed. I didn’t realize that over the course of a week I was averaging three to four hours on Youtube every day.’ It adds up,” Johansson said.

Worthwhile apps

If you can’t put down your phone completely, try switching the applications you use most frequently. If you’re going to be on your phone, you might as well make it worthwhile, right?

Instead of opening Youtube, Instagram or Facebook, here are some of the apps and tools that can be a more effective use of your screen time:

• Financial accounts: Download and check the apps for your various financial accounts. “The first app people should sign in to every day is their bank’s app and any credit card apps they use,” Robert P. Finley, a certified financial planner and the principal of Virtue Asset Management in Illinois, said in an email. “First, this process will help them better understand their daily spending, and second, help them keep an eye out for any fraud.”

• Budgeting apps: Apps such as Mint and Pocketguard can assist in keeping your spending in check. Use these regularly to get a better handle on your cash flow and how much money you’re devoting to each category of your budget.

• Organizers: Tools such as Evernote and Omnifocus can help, too. Open up these apps to create shopping lists to prevent you from buying extra things you don’t need, or to-do lists to ensure you pay all of your bills on time.

• Coupon finders: Apps — including Coupons.com and Couponcabin — compile coupons for free.

• Cash-back sites: Take the extra step to use websites such as Ebates and Befrugal to earn money back on purchases you’re already making.

• Freebies: Social media is free, but there are other free apps that could be more educational. Libby, for example, is a reading app that uses your library card to access e-books and audiobooks for free.

Watch the clock

While these apps are helpful, it can be freeing to cut down your screen time completely.

And, perhaps most importantly, start by changing your mind-set. You don’t have to be tethered to your phone.

“Once upon a time, people literally would call your house, and if you weren’t there, they would call back later,” Johansson said.