Securly Reveal: Screen Time Overview & Methodology

This article provides insights into how Securly Reveal calculates screen time, what it includes, and existing limitations.

Accessing Screen Time Data in Securly Reveal

Securly Reveal offers multiple ways for accessing screen time data:

1. Usage Explorer (Classic UI)

   This view provides the average daily screen time across all students within the selected date range, as well as the percent time used per app/site.
   
   You can also scope this data by school or time range (e.g., Last 3 days, Last week, Last month, or custom) using the school and and date filters at the top.
   
   To drill-down to individual student usage, just select the school and the activity/application.

1. Usage Explorer (Nucleus UI)
   The Nucleus UI provides the same aggregate views and per-app/site totals as the Classic UI, but with a cleaner, modernized layout
   
   To drill-down to individual student usage in this view, first select the school and the activity/application. Then, the View by Students option will become available to in the 'View by' filter.

1. Screen Time dashboard
   While the Usage Explorer provides quick summary of the screen time alongside other key metrics. The Screen Time dashboard provides a granular view of the screen time data. For more information, refer to this article.

   
   

2. Screen Time Custom Reports

• Available upon request through a Support ticket.

• Provides weekly CSV reports covering various breakdowns such as district-by-grade, district-by-school, and optionally school-level per-student data.

• Ideal for customers needing specific formatting or aggregations not available in the UI.

Important Considerations

• Chromebook-only districts: The Applications Used view is hidden since ChromeOS restricts monitoring outside the Chrome browser. However, website-level data remains unaffected.

• Timing Lag: Data in the Usage Explorer is generally available the day after the deployment.

What Securly Reveal Monitors

Securly Reveal tracks the active application or browser tab on the student's device. For browser-based activities, it records the tab title (the visible text at the top of the browser window) rather than URLs or underlying metadata.

Specifics Include:

• YouTube: The video title as it appears in the tab is recorded.

• macOS: The "loginWindow" process might dominate app-level reports as it becomes the active app between user sessions.

• Chromebook: The Applications Used section is restricted due to limitations of ChromeOS.

Screen Time Calculation Methodology

Screen time is calculated by measuring the active duration of foreground applications or browser tabs on the student's device, as follows:

• Each "activity" is defined by what is currently in the foreground.

• Screen time only accumulates while the device is powered on, unlocked, and has an active window. If the lid is closed or the device is logged out, tracking stops.

Calculation Formula:

• % Time Used: Total minutes an app/site was active divided by total monitored minutes.

• Average Daily Screen Time: Total monitored minutes divided by the number of days in the reporting period.

• Average Viewing Time (per app/site): Represents how long students spent actively viewing a specific app or website.

Custom Reports

The custom report suite outputs weekly CSVs that cover:

• District-by-grade

• District-by-school

• School-by-grade

• An optional breakdown by student at the school level.

The average screen time in the reports is calculated per day of actual usage, rather than per calendar day.

Securly Reveal provides a robust tool for monitoring screen time with varied access methods and detailed breakdowns. Understanding how this data is collected and reported will help educators make data-driven decisions to optimize student engagement and learning outcomes. For further assistance or to enable custom reporting, please reach out to Securly Support.

Related Articles

• Reveal - Introduction to Reveal - product overview, role of Blackout Settings

• Reveal - Usage Explorer - the UI walkthrough, including filters, metrics, and the ChromeOS caveat

• Reveal - Exploring Application Profiles in Securly Reveal - drill-down into a single application

• Reveal - Scheduling Automated Reports in Reveal's Usage Explorer - confirms automated scheduling goes through Support

• Reveal - Which devices are supported by Reveal - device support matrix

• Reveal FAQs - covers iPad gap, Tech Coach role, deployment basics

Reveal - Release Notes - January 2025 - trending headline statistics in Usage Explorer