Securly Reveal: Screen Time Overview & Methodology

Purpose

This article provides insights into how Securly Reveal calculates screen time, what it includes, and existing limitations. It aims to equip our customers and prospects with consistent and clear answers regarding screen time data.

Accessing Screen Time Data in Securly Reveal

Securly Reveal offers three main methods for accessing screen time data, each with unique strengths:

1. Usage Explorer (Classic UI)

   • Provides an overview of average daily screen time across all students within the selected date range.

   • Features include:

- Percentage of time used per app/site.

- Ability to filter by school or time range (e.g., Last 3 days, Last week, Last month, or custom).

- Drill-down functionality to see individual student usage on the application profile page.

• Includes options to print and save data as CSV.

1. Usage Explorer (Nucleus UI)

   • Offers the same aggregate views and per-app/site totals as the Classic UI.

   • Enhanced drill-down that allows navigation from district → school → grade → class.

   • When both an activity and a school are selected, the dropdown option "Usage by School" reveals per-student data, which will be renamed to "Usage by Student" to clarify its functionality.

2. Screen Time Custom Report Suite

   • 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.

Operating System Coverage

Securly Reveal supports the following operating systems:

• Windows: Versions 8, 8.1, 10 (32/64-bit), 11.

• macOS: Versions 10.12 and above (latest three versions).

• ChromeOS: Supported via the Cloud Connector extension (Google Admin).

• iPadOS: Currently not supported. A potential iPadOS extension is under review with Apple.

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.

Conclusion

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 canonical 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