I’ve been having trouble with my phone recently. I noticed it particularly while in France a few weeks ago. I’d flop on the sunbed with a book and then spend half an hour scrolling through ridiculous videos online. But then I do it at home, too – go to bed early thinking ‘Ooh good, nice early night with my book’. And then I see a video of a dog jumping into a swimming pool, or a chef cooking a Japanese omelette, or someone removing blackheads from their nose, or a clip of something that might be a cake but also might be a shoe, or someone else offering an improbable DIY tip involving a clothes hanger and a jar of honey, or a video of nail art, or of an influencer promising ‘THE ONLY RECIPE FOR BANG BANG CHICKEN YOU’LL EVER NEED’, and so on and so on. Before I know it, half an hour has passed and I’ve melted another few hundred brain cells. My book lies untouched beside me.
It is unbearable, this endless scrolling. It’s such a waste of time, and yet there I am, gripped by a video in which a woman uses an electric foot pumice to remove dead skin from her cracked heels. How can we possibly expect teenagers to be any better than us on their phones when we’re so feeble and addicted?
So, recently, I canvassed opinion on social media and asked for others’ tips on cutting back on phone use. I do see the irony of this – using my phone to ask how to use my phone less. But you’ve got to start somewhere, and I can’t tell you how many people replied desperately saying ‘PLEASE SHARE THEM!’. So many people. Which selfishly made me feel better about finding myself in bed watching a woman exfoliate her own feet.
Thankfully, lots of people also replied with tips, so I’ve compiled a list of all replies. Some may be obvious; some less so. And if you have a suggestion which isn’t mentioned, do pop it in the comments below.
- ‘I get my tall husband to put it in the cupboard up high.’
- ‘Only allow yourself to look at it at quarter past/half past/quarter to/o’clock. Even if it’s 11.16 you have to wait until 11.30, etc. And then only do the thing you needed to do, and as soon as you’ve finished it, put your phone out of reach/in a box/in a different room.’
- Turn off notifications for certain apps. (I’ve done this for all my social media and WhatsApp, and it helps in that it means my phone doesn’t flash every time someone messages me. But I’m still quite bad at going into my phone to check and see if I have any new notifications. So I wouldn’t call it foolproof.)
- Use Brick/Opal/Cold Turkey/One Sec or another app to block or restrict your use of apps at certain times. Brick was the most recommended app from all the replies to my question.
- Get an old Nokia, which means you can only call or message with it.
- Go into Settings and turn greyscale on. This makes everything on your phone black and white, and supposedly that much less addictive because our dopamine receptors aren’t hit so hard. I find it quite alarming that such a simple change can have such a big impact – are we really such babies that we can trick ourselves by turning the colour off? Apparently so. I did this yesterday, so it’s too early to tell whether it’s had any effect yet. But my phone’s definitely more boring to look at.
- ‘I bought a literal lockbox from Amazon. It’s great. Once it’s locked, you cannot possibly open it. Set it for how long you want.’
- ‘Rubber band tightly around the screen! (Tip: space out the bands widely as you wind it round. It makes it almost impossible to scroll and use the screen, and stops you just long enough to make you realise you don’t want/need to.’
- Buy a Punkt phone, a very basic phone which looks like a calculator, and again only allows you to call or message with it.
- ‘Put it on airplane mode and leave it in your knicker drawer.’
- Delete social media from your phone and only have it on your computer. ‘I pretty much stopped looking at my phone,’ said this person.
- ‘My answer to my addiction to my iPhone is… an Apple Watch. Sounds ridiculous but it stops that urge to keep checking my phone to see if I’ve missed a call or message because I know they’ll flash up on my watch.’
- Similar, but perhaps healthier, was a message from my friend Alex. ‘Buying a watch has been the biggest game changer for me,’ she said, meaning a more bog-standard watch. ‘Before my watch, I was checking my phone for the time every five minutes and the next thing I knew an hour would have gone by [on the apps]. I also bought a pocket-sized Pride and Prejudice to dip into at those bored moments waiting for the bus, but this has been less successful.’
- ‘I’ve resorted to putting my bag, with my phone in it, in the boot of the car to stop any temptation, whether driving or passenger.’
- ‘Simply turn it over when you’re working.’ (I do this every day, ‘hiding’ my phone behind my laptop screen, or under a pillow if I’m trying to read, so it’s not in my direct line of sight. Helps, but again, not foolproof.)
- ‘I made some wallpaper on Canva for my phone which is a picture of my daughter with the words: “Do you really want to use your phone right now?” It acts as a reminder every time I pick my phone up – do I really need to use it or is it habit?’
- ‘I don’t use it after 9.30 p.m. – it goes on its stand and I do a paper crossword if I get antsy. Leave it in the kitchen, and then don’t pick it up again until after my first coffee.’
- ‘Leave it downstairs and buy an expensive Roberts alarm clock.’
- ‘I only have one charger in the house so it makes it much harder to randomly pick up when it’s charging. And it’s a really slow charger.’
- ‘Delete Twitter.’
- ‘Delete Instagram.’
- ‘Wear mittens.’
- ‘Do something else with your hands, like horse-riding.’ (This marvellous suggestion came from a double-barrelled woman and I liked it very much.)
- ‘Lock it in your drawer for an hour or so a day and increase it gradually.’
- ‘Timed safe. I started on a set timer with release every 45 minutes and it helped break the addiction. Also never sleep in the same room as your phone. I also read on Reddit of one girl who didn’t allow herself to go on her phone unless she was naked in front of the mirror (the theory being that it becomes a much less relaxing experience.)’
- ‘Put it on “Do not disturb” upstairs.’
- ‘Read a book called How to Break Up with Your Phone.’
- ‘Get your password wrong on purpose a number of times so the phone locks itself for 15 minutes.’
- ‘Every time you think about picking it up, just clap. You’ll look/feel so silly that you’ll stop.’
A version of this article first appeared on Sophia Money-Coutts’s Substack, Onwards and Sideways!
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