In media psychology, digital trace data of media use—particularly logs of “screen time” collected from user’s smartphones—has been widely adopted as an ‘objective’ measure of digital media use. Proponents argue that such data enhances research validity, reducing biases inherent in self-reported media use, contributing towards more robust findings about media uses and effects (e.g., Parry et al., 2021). However, critics contend that high-level, aggregate measures of time spent using digital media, irrespective of how ‘objectively’ they are measured, are an insufficient and misleading metric that lacks psychological depth (e.g., Kaye et al., 2020). This debate seeks to address whether media psychology truly benefits from screen and app time logs or if researchers should allocate (scarce) resources to alternative methods.