First in a series of occasional articles on life in a screen-saturated society

BILLERICA - At 5 o’clock on a weekday morning, the alarm sounds on Nicki Laffey’s cellphone, cradled beside her pillow. Before getting ready for school, the 16-year-old checks for any text messages that came in while she was asleep.

An hour later, her father, Kevin, turns on his bedroom television and exercises for 30 minutes. Her mother, Shelly, goes downstairs and makes breakfast while watching the news on her kitchen TV. The last in the family to rise is Nicki’s 18-year-old brother, Chris, who sends and receives half a dozen texts before heading off to school.

Before day and night are done, the Laffeys will have collectively logged nearly 50 hours of screen time, divided among cellphones (each owns one), computers (ditto), and television sets (the house has seven). Not so easily quantifiable, though, is the toll all this screen time takes on family life, as sit-down meals have become hit-and-miss affairs and even a weekend dinner out can raise the issue of who’s watching what, and why.

Nicki alone will have sent more than 250 texts between wake-up and bedtime. Kevin will have spent the bulk of his workday in front of a computer, and much of his after-work time watching televised sports. Shelly will have used the household desktop computer to manage her home daycare business, a dashboard-mounted GPS device to plot her driving routes, and a steady stream of TV shows to keep herself company (“I like the noise’’) while doing chores. Chris, meanwhile, will have transitioned from one screen to the next - from cellphone to laptop to interactive “smartboards’’ in his school classrooms - during the course of his hectic day.