Shakespeare tells us that the eyes are the window to the soul. In this cyber age, our phones may offer a similar window into our preferences, personalities, and habits.
Most of us spend a lot of time looking at our phones, so in the spirit of insight — or at least voyeurism — PAW inaugurates what we are creatively calling “What’s on Your Phone?” The premise is simple: We approached several people in the Princeton community and asked them to tell us, well, what was on their phone. Kicking us off are: students Claire Middleton ’24 and Chris Thomas ’24, Provost Jennifer Rexford ’91, history professor Kevin Kruse, women’s basketball coach Carla Berube, and PAW editor Peter Barzilai s’97.
Claire Middleton ’24
Ecology and evolutionary biology major from Durham, North Carolina
How many contacts do you currently have? 876.
How many unread emails do you currently have? 15.
What’s the first and last app you check every day? The New York Times.
What’s your favorite news app? Entertainment app? Sports app? NYT, NYT Games, and ESPN.
What’s an app you want to delete but can’t? Instagram.
What was your daily screen time average last week? 4 hours, 47 minutes.
What is your ringtone? I keep my phone on silent because I am an academic weapon.
What is your lock screen photo? My doggo Baxter!
Chris Thomas ’24
Economics major from Bremen, Georgia
How many contacts do you currently have? 659.
How many unread emails do you currently have? 390.
What’s the first and last app you check every day? First is Weather and the last is Instagram.
What’s your favorite news app? Entertainment app? Sports app? Snapchat News, Max, and ESPN.
What’s an app you want to delete but can’t? DraftKings Sportsbook.
What was your daily screen time average last week? 9 hours.
What is your ringtone? Default.
What is your lock screen photo? Friends and I climbing a mountain.
Carla Berube
Women’s basketball coach
How many contacts do you currently have? 5,313.
How many unread emails do you currently have? Personal email = 81,249 — work = 4.
What’s the first and last app you check every day? First, NYTimes (mostly to play Wordle and Spelling Bee). Last, Instagram.
What’s your favorite news app? Entertainment app? Sports app? NYTimes, IG, ESPN/The Athletic.
What’s an app you want to delete but can’t? X.
What was your daily screen time average last week? How was it divided? 2 hours, 45 minutes. Most used is Mail, Messages, IG, NYT, Google Calendar, Chrome, and Two Dots.
What is your ringtone? It’s always on silent!
What is your lock screen photo? It’s on Photo Shuffle of my three kids!
Kevin Kruse
Professor of history
How many contacts do you currently have? 292.
How many unread emails do you currently have? Zero. I can’t stand having unread emails in my inbox and, as a result, usually respond to emails fairly quickly. (My grad students have complained I answer them a little too quickly.)
What’s the first and last app you check every day? Bluesky and Threads, just to get a quick sense of breaking news.
What’s your favorite news app? Entertainment app? Sports app? Mostly social media for news, but I also use The New York Times and Washington Post apps. For entertainment, I guess the NYT Games app. I do Wordle and Spelling Bee as I have breakfast and drink coffee. For sports, right now it’s the ESPN Fantasy Football app.
What’s an app you want to delete but can’t? A month ago, I would’ve said Twitter, but I’ve actually recently deleted it. I had built up a fairly large account there (a half million followers) in the Before Times, but every one of Elon’s “improvements” has made the site much more toxic and much less useful, so I deleted it in early October and haven’t looked back since. Highly recommended.
What was your daily screen time average last week? How was it divided? 3 hours, 4 minutes. 40% Bluesky/Threads, 20% Mail, 15% Music, 10% NYT Games.
What is your ringtone? I always have it on silent/vibrate, but for alarms I use Vampire Weekend’s “This Life.”
What is your lock screen photo? An old photo of my wife and kids on the Jadwin Jumbotron during a men’s basketball game. I’m a faculty adviser so we try to go as often as we can.
Jennifer Rexford ’91
Provost and Gordon Y.S. Wu Professor in Engineering and professor of computer science
How many contacts do you currently have? 1,019. I honestly expected the number to be much smaller. Do I really know all these people?
How many unread emails do you currently have? 12 unread in my work email, but that’s misleading. I have so many more barely read and even more unanswered! Across all my email accounts, I have 1,134 emails in Inbox.
What’s the first and last app you check every day? Email or Slack in the morning (I use Slack for my research group), and Wordscapes for unwinding before bed.
What’s your favorite news app? Entertainment app? Sports app? NYTimes and CNN for news. I don’t really have entertainment apps, unless you count YouTube or Facebook. Similarly for sports. NYTimes for serious reading, and CNN for a quick check on what’s going on.
What’s an app you want to delete but can’t? Facebook.
What was your daily screen time average last week? How was it divided? 3 hours, 20 minutes (total 23 hours, 29 minutes), with Outlook (6 hours, 32 minutes), Chrome (2 hours, 29 minutes), Safari (2 hours, 21 minutes), Facebook (1 hour, 55 minutes), Messages (1 hour), Wordscapes (42 minutes), and Podcasts (30 minutes) the most used.
What is your ringtone? The default one. I was too lazy to change it, which means when I’m in a meeting and any phone rings, I can’t tell if it is mine. Hmmm, maybe I should change the ringtone.
What is your lock screen photo? The default one (the night view of North and South America) — I was too lazy to change it.
Peter Barzilai s’97
PAW editor
How many contacts do you currently have? 946. I’m ashamed to admit this includes a few people who are no longer with us. And I don’t mean they’ve switched to an Android.
How many unread emails do you currently have? 803, but I really do read and respond to all emails. OK, most of them.
What’s the first and last app you check every day? Instagram at night and sports apps in the morning to see how my West Coast teams did.
What’s your favorite news app? Entertainment app? Sports app? USA TODAY (after all, I am an alum), Spotify, and The Athletic.
What’s an app you want to delete but can’t? The app formerly known as Twitter. It’s not exactly a guilty pleasure because it’s often not that enjoyable, so yes, you could say I have a problem.
What was your daily screen time average last week? How was it divided? 1 hour, 55 minutes, with 44 minutes of that on Spotify, followed by Mail, social media, Safari, and Messages.
What is your ringtone? Opening to “This Must Be the Place” by Talking Heads.
What is your lock screen photo? Family photo from Hawaii vacation. It kind of looks like an album cover.