How to become less addicted to your phone
How to be less addicted to your phone: a guide.
The average person is thought to spend approximately 4 hours on their phone per day, as of 2021. I wouldn’t be surprised if the real number is closer to 8 or 9 hours per day. Our phones give us the perfect respite from boredom, feelings or reality. It’s the numbing vortex available 24/7, from when you wake up in the middle of the night unable to sleep, to popping to the bathroom in the middle of the day. We take breaks from the big screens by going on the little ones, which are almost constantly tethered to our bodies like a 5th limb.
Depending on your situation, you might want to approach this by the below standards / screen-time:
Level 1: spending slightly too much time on your phone. (0-4 hrs per day)
Level 2: moderately addicted to your phone. (4-8 hours per day)
Level 3: addicted to your phone. (8 hours+ per day)
A good test also is deciding not to use your phone for the day, and seeing how long you can go.
Hack your own attention with a plan
This means looking at how you use your phone and implementing a blockage plan, essentially your ‘weak spots’. Do you use your phone most when you’re in bed at night? Trying to find a song to play for the shower? Distracting yourself from work? Whatever it is, identify it and make an active plan to impose a barrier, for example, by not allowing yourself to take your phone into the bathroom. Humans are pretty simple, and if something is harder to do than easier (e.g having to walk upstairs to check social media), we will be less likely to do it out of boredom.
This might be easier to do if you track your screen-time and usage for a few days. It’s also important to have a plan in place for a replacement activity, such as fidget toys, writing in a diary, having wireless speakers or alarm clocks in place, and so on.
Sleep
Ideally, you want to have your phone out of the room you sleep in. Here’s a list of the potential solutions:
Use your phone as your alarm? Buy an alarm clock like this.
Use your phone before you go to sleep? Set a rule not to bring it into your bedroom at all - even a reminder notice on your door if necessary. You can set up podcasts / meditations etc. to play on a wireless speaker inside your room.
Use your phone when you wake up at night? Don’t. It is creating a habit in your brain that you will use your phone if you can’t sleep: instead, try to think of an animal for each letter of the alphabet. If you still can’t sleep, write.
Need to check your phone first thing in the morning? Make a conscious decision to do one other thing first. Even if it’s just drinking a glass of water. Then check it in a different room.
Distractibility
Have a phone-box: as in, a physical box that you can put your phone in, preferably as far away as possible from where you are sitting when you want to concentrate. Ideally, you’d put the phone in there for the majority of the day, but this is especially useful when you want to concentrate for a specific period. If you find that you keep going to get it, try a lockable version.
Set office hours for your phone: for example, using your phone from 9am-5pm each day. Put your phone in the phone-box at all other times, setting yourself a reminder to turn it off at these times. Ideally, you want to have the first and last hour of your day free of your phone.
Stop interruptions: Turn off the majority of your notifications (Settings - Notifications - switch off app by app). You may want to leave on specific ones to allow calls or messages from specific people to come through. Alternatively, you can keep your phone in ‘do not disturb’ mode for the majority of the time you use it.
Tidy up your homepage: put all of your apps into a little folder. Within this folder, make 3 more: ‘tools’, ‘social’ and ‘utilities’. When you want to use them, scroll to the left and type in the name of the app you want.
Give yourself conscious freedom: an app called ‘Freedom’ can block access to specific apps and websites across your phone and laptop, for specific times. It’s so good it was banned from the app store until a legal challenge saw it reinstated.
Use a watch: or other single-use tool depending on your needs, such as a calculator.
Screen-time
Set your background as a black image: basically, as boring or to the point as possible. You can also use the image above if you like (remember the days of buying phone wallpapers?!)
Track your screen-time alongside other people: an app called ‘Moment’ tracks which apps are using most of your time, how long you’re spending on your phone, and lets you set up groups with other people you know as a very effective measure of accountability. You can also set up a screen time ‘widget’ to stay on your homepage and let you know how much time you’ve spent on it so far that day.
Delete ‘junk food apps’: the ones that use most of your time. By using your internet browser on your laptop, this means that you’re much more conscious about how you’re spending your time on these apps and can’t be lured in by mobile-only features such as notifications.
Block websites on your phone: yes, you can also use the in-built screen-time, but if you’re anything like me, you’ll just pop in the lock-code and continue using your app. By blocking websites under the ‘content & privacy restrictions - web content - limit adult websites’ settings on safari, you can actively stop yourself from automatically going onto the ones that provide effective distractions or ‘guilty pleasures’.
Make your phone black and white: this can be found under (settings - general - accessibility - display accommodations - colour filter). It’s quite amazing to see the differences in the digital textures of buttons when they’re in this mode!
You can also read ADHD: an A to Z (yes, even if you don’t have ADHD), which is an explanation of how to control your attention in all areas of your life to live how YOU want to live.