How I’m Going to Break My Phone Addiction (and You Can Too)
Photo by Maria Ballesteros on Unsplash
Over the past two months, I’ve become extremely addicted to my phone. I cannot sit at my desk and face my work without my hand instantly floating over to my phone and swiping the screen to open. I cannot eat food without my phone in front of my face. And it must come with me to the bathroom or I feel uncomfortable…
It’s getting out of hand and I’m ready to take a stand and claw those hours of my life back from the void of the internet.
I think that, for me, this is happening because I’ve been on a downward spiral of stress, feeling like a failure, and continuously not making progress because those feelings are blocking me. (Which cues even more downward spiral.)
I’ve also developed a healthy addiction to Reddit (because Google has made itself useless, so now we’re all using Reddit like Google, but Reddit has the added distraction of being able to read about one thousand other people’s hot takes on whatever question is being asked…)
Not to mention current events in the U.S. feels like watching a slow-moving car wreck and I feel like I’ve got to keep my eyes on it at all times so I can know when to get out of the way.
Since I’ve finally found my inspiration/rock bottom to motivate me to solve this problem, I’m sharing what I’ve learned about how to quit wasting my life scrolling.
Start with compassion.
Give yourself some grace. All of the technology in our lives today is literally designed to grab our attention and trap that attention. Social media companies actually employ teams of psychologists whose job it is to devise ways to make you stay on their platform as long as possible. Your mind and attention has been commodified (meaning they make money off of you scrolling).
Not to mention, being on a screen and being constantly updated about the world is completely unnatural and our brains are not evolved to handle it.
The phone is addicting because it’s designed to be addicting. Not because you’re a “lazy” or “bad” person. You just happen to live in a time on earth where society expects us to carry a highly interesting and entertaining computer around in our pocket everywhere we go.
Focus on when you WILL DO the thing, rather than when you WON’T DO the thing.
Thinking about staying off your phone is really just your brain focusing on your phone. This is like if you were sat in a room with a pile of Halloween candy and you only stared at the candy and thought to yourself, “I won’t eat that candy.” Instead of doing that, what if you thought, “I will do literally anything else.”?
Here is how this concept applies to your phone: set specific times when you will scroll (i.e. 30 minutes in the morning at 7:30 am, 30 minutes - 1 hour in the evening at 6:00 pm). Then, when your brain starts itching for that fix, you’re able to tell yourself, “I’ll get to look at my phone, but only when I get home at 6:00 pm.”
Plan something else for the time when you normally scroll, if you don’t want to scroll at that time anymore.
Let’s use the classic bedtime scroll as an example. Pick out activities you can do at that same time that help accomplish the same thing your phone is giving you (entertainment for entertainment, distraction for distraction). If you swap scrolling for an activity that you don’t like, this won’t work.
Think about why you’re driven to scroll in the first place. The plan you make to avoid scrolling should fill that need. If you’re scrolling because you’re stressed about work and you want to be distracted (i.e. if you’re self-medicating stress or anxiety) try a phone-free activity that distracts/occupies to meet that need. Ideas for occupying yourself to manage anxiety include: coloring, going for a walk, talking to someone, journaling, or making a cup of tea.
Note that there’s a difference between distracting for anxiety/stress and avoiding due to anxiety/stress. Avoidance can make anxiety/stress worse because it delays your addressing the underlying issue when there is one. For example, if there’s a task you’ve had to do at work and you keep avoiding it with scrolling. Continuing to avoid it with going for a walk might be healthier, but it won’t help you overcome that task. But, I will say that if you go for a walk instead of scrolling, by the time you get back you’ll probably be in a better headspace to finally handle that task.
Set up your environment for success.
When you don’t want yourself to be on your phone, give your phone a different home. And by that I mean you can create a specific place where you put your phone during your designated phone-free time. For example, at home you could put your phone on the charger in a different room.
Getting the phone physically away from you, but also in a place where you’ll know where it is, will help you not constantly pick it up and use it. The point of putting it in a designated place is to reduce/prevent those panicked “Where is my phone?!?” moments that our brains have learned how to do.
Leverage tech.
There are a bunch of different ways to use the technology to make the technology less distracting or interesting.
My number one way is to set my phone to silent and place it face-down. Constant buzzing from notifications and texts just triggers your brain to need to look at the phone. Silent and face-down will help reduce those triggers.
Another big one is to program your phone to go into grayscale at certain times, like at bedtime. Greyscale on the phone is way less engaging to our brains so it helps you quit. Some people find it beneficial to live with their phone in grayscale.
Most phones these days have all kinds of settings you can employ to reduce screen time. For example, you can set it up to go into that grayscale and basically brick itself for a certain time frame. (Like 10:00 pm to 6:00 am, anyone??)
Finally, I am eagerly awaiting the Opal app coming to Android. I hear that this app makes it impossible to get around app blocks once you’ve set them up. This would be useful for me because I always know I can just uninstall the app blocker when I want to, and you better believe that’s what I do…
Do a regular media elimination.
This one is kind of based on the concept of an elimination diet. I am a big fan of elimination diets (like the Whole30) because quitting things cold turkey really helps me reset. Like when my relationship with sugar gets out of hand?
Doing an elimination helps your brain reset its relationship with the distraction of your phone. To do a media elimination, you would eliminate media from your life for a specific amount of time every week. This should be the form of media that’s causing you the most trouble, like social media, news, or streaming (or all).
This could look like every Friday you don’t look at social media at all. Or every weekend you do not look at Reddit at all.
One way to amp this up is to do a cold-turkey elimination for 30 days. Some people like to start with a big 30-day elimination and then move to weekly media breaks. Others like to start small and then go big later. It’s up to you!
Set a goal, track that progress, and celebrate it.
Aiming toward something specific and tracking your progress toward that goal is the foundation of behavior change.
For reducing your time on your phone, this could look like:
Evaluate your starting point by checking your screen time on your phone. Write it down!
Set a goal. Choose something specific that feels achievable, like a reduction of 1 hour per day this week. Write that down! Especially in the format of ‘I will do xyz at abc time each 123 amount of time.’ (For example: “I will reduce my scrolling time by one hour per day this week. I will do this by setting my phone to silent during the evening and putting it in my bag while I’m at work.”)
Track your progress (in a non-phone format). This could be on a whiteboard, on a note on the fridge, on a scrap of paper in your pocket. (Please don’t be like me and wait to change your life until you have the perfect notebook!)
At the end of the week, evaluate your progress. Take note of what worked and what you can change to be more successful next time.
Next, celebrate yourself. Even if you did not reduce your screen time at all - celebrate yourself for trying and for being a person who wants to be more present. Celebrate yourself purposefully for working on this goal with something that’s meaningful to you. This could be anything from a cookie from that one bakery to calling a friend and telling them what you accomplished. Please actually do this and open yourself to the positive feelings. You are allowed to feel proud of yourself. (Bonus: I challenge you to tell that bakery employee why you’re buying yourself a cookie. They will love it, I promise.)
Continuously repeat this cycle and you will start to see big improvements in your phone habit.
If you employ all of these tactics in combination with a long-term objective accomplished via SMART goals, you will be able to break your phone addiction pretty quickly. To make it easier for you, I created a “Break Your Phone Addiction” workbook, which you can grab here.
