We’re already off to an awkward start here. Are you reading this on your phone?
Yikes.
My iPhone has made my life significantly easier in a lot of ways. It’s way less of a frustration to budget and pay my credit card bills, navigate to a new destination, check business hours, and take photos.
Remember paper paychecks and checkbooks? MapQuest and TomToms? Physical phone books with white pages and yellow pages? Those yellow-paper-wrapped Kodak disposable cameras?
But, at the same time, my iPhone has been destroying my brain. I find myself..
- Easily distracted and incapable of focusing on tasks at hand
- Struggling to remember things, both short-term and long-term
- Re-reading paragraphs of books because they’re not sticking
- Closing out of long-form in-depth written news stories because they’re “too lengthy”
- Pausing a 22-minute TV episode to “check something on my phone really quickly,” only to look up 45 minutes later and realize my TV had turned itself off while I’d just been aimlessly scrolling through Instagram Reels
Surely this cannot be the same brain that once wrote a 50-page master’s thesis in the span of a week, learned an entirely new language in two months and remained fully-engaged during four-hour university labs?!
Late last year, a good friend texted me to tell me that her father died. I didn’t even know her dad was having health issues. But do you know what I did know? I knew that an influencer who showed up in my Instagram “explore” tab had recently gotten a new pair of JNCO jeans. I didn’t even follow that influencer, and yet, I knew her name, and where she lived, and her boyfriend’s name, and her dog’s name, and where she used to work, and I realized at that point that I knew more about the lives of people online — people I’ve never met who don’t even know I exist — than I did about the people I consider to be my closest friends, and that was a huge problem.
That combined with a few other things — like recent meditations and revelations in India — was kind of my wake-up call to kick my iPhone addiction and reestablish my brain’s neural connections that I’d been severing every time I found myself refreshing Twitter.
I recently re-read “How to Break Up with Your Phone” by Catherine Price, which I read for the first time several years ago as part of a book club back in Chicago.
I highly, highly recommend reading this book. It’s fairly short (which is great if you’re trying to recapture your dumb brain’s attention span like I am), and broken up into two parts: “The Wake-Up,” and “The Break-Up.”
“The Wake-Up” lists out all the evidence that no, you’re not imagining it: Your smartphone is ruining your brain. This part of the book references scientific studies that prove your phone is designed to be addictive, and that the addiction is hindering your brain’s ability to do normal, brain things.
The second part, “The Break-Up,” lists out a 30-day plan to evaluate your relationship with your smartphone, break that bad habits that exist between you and your phone, and create a healthier relationship between you and your phone.
While I didn’t adhere to the 30-day plan exactly, I did use parts of it to create a plan for myself.
So far, that plan has been working pretty well! My screen time is down SIGNIFICANTLY over the last few weeks.
A few of the biggest tips that helped me:
being mindful
Realizing I had a problem was the first step. I’ve known for a while that I have a major phone addiction. But while I knew those things, it wasn’t until I took some time to slow down and consciously think about my relationship with my phone and its apps, and acknowledge my feelings and triggers, that I was able to actually start implementing real change.
Price talks about this in the first part of her 30-day plan. Really, really bringing my awareness to my actual behaviors, thoughts, and feelings surrounding my phone was really helpful in bringing my brain to a place where it wanted to stop the bad behaviors.
removing apps from my home screen, logging out of apps, deleting apps from my phone and deactivating accounts entirely
I removed some apps — like Reddit, Instagram and Pinterest — from my phone’s home screen and logged out of them. I kept them on my phone, but now I make myself actively search for them and log into them every time I want to use them. This gives me just enough time for my brain to kick in and say “wait… WHY are you doing this?” If I want to post a photo, it reminds me that I have an intention, which is enough of a reason to find the app, log in, post my photo, log out, and move on with my life. If I just want to aimlessly scroll, this measure prevents me from doing so.
I deactivated other accounts — like Facebook and Threads — and completely deleted the apps from my phone. This is essentially another step to the above. If I really, really crave my social feeds (or need to find a long-lost photo posted back in 2009), all the data and information still exists, and I can simply reactivate my accounts via my computer and then deactivate them when I’m done.
I completely deleted other accounts — like Twitter and TikTok. I realized that these apps had zero redeeming qualities and didn’t add anything positive to my life.
getting my notifications under control
I used my iPhone’s focus modes and downtime features to block my apps for huge chunks of my day, and to remove almost every single notification from my phone. I removed notifications for everything except my calendar, messaging apps (Messages, WhatsApp, etc.), fitness notifications (“time to stand!”), alarm clock and my phone. That’s it. I removed all forms of these notifications: red bubbles, banners, pings, buzzes — all of them.
I made sure to duplicate these settings (which I deemed “flip phone mode” on my iPhone and my Apple Watch. I’m trying to get better at focusing, and I’ve noticed that unimportant notifications pull me out of the moment I’m in and draw me away from the things I actually want to be paying attention to.
putting my phone in black-and-white mode
I changed my phone screen to grayscale, which was probably the biggest thing that helped me stay off my phone.
If you’re interested, Price has a video under “Step 2” here that shows how easy it is to put your phone in grayscale mode while enabling a simple shortcut to bringing your phone back to color mode. While I love that grayscale keeps me off my phone, it’s a pain in the ass to do certain things — like taking photos, using Maps, and FaceTiming — while my phone is in black-and-white mode. This video is a great fix.
physically distancing myself from my phone: creating ‘phone-free zones’
I paid attention to the places I find myself aimlessly scrolling on my phone.
I moved my Belkin charger to our home office and designated our bedroom as a phone-free zone, which eliminates my tendencies to scroll first thing in the morning and last thing at night. I also designated our kitchen table and couch as phone-free zones since those are two locations I spend a lot of time in.
I try to keep my iPhone on its charger in my home office while I’m at home to discourage me from reaching for it. Using my Apple Watch (ironically) helps. It lets me see the notifications that are somewhat important (texts, calls, calendar reminders) without giving me a way to open my phone to reply to a text… only to find myself cycling aimlessly through apps 30 minutes later.
creating alternatives
I do have hobbies, I promise. I have plenty of hobbies that keep my brain and hands engaged. While these hobbies don’t bring me the immediate dopamine hit that scrolling on my phone gives me, these hobbies do bring me more long-term joy and fulfillment than endless scrolling.
Three things that really helped me with this:
- I made a list of things I could do instead of scrolling (read a book, take a walk, cuddle Ochi, meditate), wrote it all on a sticky note, and stuck that sticky note on my phone screen for about a week until I really got into the habit of conditioning myself to seek alternatives before scrolling on my phone.
- If I found myself carrying my phone around somewhere (on a lunch break during a day hike, in the waiting room for a doctor’s appointment), I started carrying my Kindle around with it. That way, if I found myself reaching for my phone, I could start reaching for my Kindle instead.
- I re-introduced hobbies that keep my fingers and hands preoccupied, like knitting and playing my ukulele.
・・・
Those are all the tips I have for you today. Hopefully, you’ve put your phone down at this point and haven’t actually made it this far down your screen. 😉
I really do recommend “How to Break Up with Your Phone” if you get a chance to read it. I have both the Kindle version, and I checked a copy out from my local library. Having used both versions, I definitely prefer the hard copy. It’s great to revisit time-to-time to reevaluate your relationship with your phone!
If you have any tips for cutting screen time and avoiding mindless scrolling, I’d love to know. Dump ’em in the comments!
