For just over the past year, I have been taking steps in my life to reduce the amount of time I spend on my phone. This has been consistently challenging and frustrating, as I have a goal—2 hours or less a day—that I just have not been able to achieve. However, it has also taught me a lot about motivation, discipline, and consistency.
But first, before I discuss limiting screen time, it is important to talk about what catalyst brought me to wanting to limit my phone usage. In other words, what brought me to the point where phone usage was a problem? Simply put, it was getting in the way of my life.
I spent an average of four hours a day on my phone, consistently for two years. In the 10th grade, it was not much of a problem because, honestly, I was not that busy. I could afford to sit on my phone for several hours after school, then around nine or ten o’clock rush through my English assignment (sorry, Mr. Pietroforte) before going to bed. However, in 11th grade, I had significantly more schoolwork and other responsibilities. I no longer had several hours a day to waste, though that never stopped me from trying.
I noticed that I viewed interacting with my phone as simultaneously draining and necessary. After scrolling on my phone for several hours, I felt guilty and angry at myself for what I viewed as a lapse in character. Yet, I couldn’t stop; I would always tell myself, “I’m just going to quickly check,” but would never live up to that expectation.
The issue is that phones, and everything in them, are actively trying to grab and keep your attention. Falling for that, especially as teenagers, isn’t a moral failing or indicator of a lack of discipline but rather a fault of the world today. On March 25, a court case in Los Angeles found Meta and Google guilty of negligence and of designing products specifically designed to be addictive. The plaintiffs specifically cited the infinity scroll design, algorithms, and filters as parts that were included to make children addicted. Furthermore, it came to light that the executives of Meta and Google knew about the addiction factor but ignored it.
That being said, we should not shift the responsibility of phone usage onto the general world, but rather recognize that although the odds may be stacked against us, we must take personal responsibility for how we live our lives.
Most teenagers spend around six hours a day on their phones, and nearly 80% say that they frequently use social media, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Adults are not much better off, spending on average 4.5 hours on their phones. Some quick math, the average teenager spends 42 hours per week on their phone, or up to around 90 days a year, or 25% of the year¹. This is just the numbers on screen time from phones, as it seems unfair to include computers since they are so integrated into education. But, it’s not just the actual amount of time spent that’s the issue; it’s also the consequences of so much exposure to the internet.
A paper published in the National Library of Medicine showed that excessive screen time can lead to a medley of health concerns, ranging from eye strain to decreased attention span and an increase in suicidal thoughts.
Additionally, while one may feel more connected to others through always being on their phone, these connections are often surface-level. Phones can give people an excuse to not talk or form connections with the people around them, instead focusing on weak, often para-social connections through the internet. That being said, texting people or using social media is not all bad. They are a great way to keep in touch with friends you may not see often or strengthen friendships with people you do see every day!
For me, I felt my life slowly slipping away as I spent more and more time on my phone. So one day in January, I realized that I was sick of it. That’s when I made my goal to spend two hours or less a day on my phone. Now 14 months later, I can say I have not been able to do that, at least not consistently. But I am closer to that goal and a lot more intentional about my phone usage.
If you are feeling like I do, that you don’t want to be on your phone as much, here are some concrete things I do to decrease phone usage
1. Make your phone boring
The goal here is to just make yourself less likely to pick up your phone, thereby spending less time on it. This often includes deleting highly distracting apps such as mobile games, social media, or really anything that fits into the entertainment category as a whole.
The main takeaway from this category is that while deleting those apps may seem scary, or you feel like you will be out of the loop if you do, there are very few, if any, lasting effects. Many teenagers and adults are opting out of social media as a whole, and at least in my experience, nobody really bats an eye when you say you don’t have a specific app.
If you are not ready to delete the apps as a whole, there are steps you can take to make the apps more boring. Some people suggest gray scale, and while I do have gray scale on my phone, I am not sure how much it helps. However, arguably the most useful thing for me recently was turning off my YouTube watch history. This means that when I open YouTube on any device, I do not get any recommendations, and so have to search for what I want to watch. Practically, this means I only end up watching YouTube if I know what I want to watch beforehand.
Additionally, turning off notifications can be very helpful. I have notifications off for all apps except for personal messages; even then, I often might turn on do not disturb or mute specific group chats. Getting notifications interrupts workflow and draws attention to the phone, both things I do not want. Most notifications are completely unnecessary, and I just catch up the next time I open my phone.
2. Screen time limits
If you have an iPhone, there are options for screen time limits in settings. Personally, I never found those that were successful, since it is very easy to bypass, and I forgot my screen time password so I can’t change them. So one of the first things I did was install the app Opal² on my phone.
Opal is fairly simple; you can set up a number of different blocks on your phone, such as: a limit on how many times you open an app, blocking an app after you hit a certain number of minutes, or blocking several apps during a certain time period. I have a “focus session,” as they are called, set up for nighttime and school hours. Although I’ve since deleted most of the apps they blocked so I probably don’t need them anymore.
Additionally, Opal also tracks screen time and their specific mechanism for tracking screen time is actually partly why I prefer it to other apps. They have a setting where you can tag certain apps as productive or distracting, and only the distracting ones will count towards the screen time. This gives a more accurate count of how much time is “wasted” on your phone, as it does not count anything productive. For example, I have Google Docs set as productive on my phone, since, if I’m on Google Docs, I’m probably doing school.
Now, here is where personal accountability comes into play; you can bypass these time limits. On some level, you must be personally responsible and accountable to not skip the limits whenever they come up.
3. Replace your phone
What I mean by this is that your phone occupies space in your life, and by reducing screen time, you are leaving that “gap” in your life. This gap, if not filled by something else that satisfies whatever need or routine, will eventually be filled in again with your phone.
One way to find where those gaps would be is to think about when you unconsciously grab your phone. Is it when you get home from school as a way to de-stress? During lunch, when you are bored? During the time you set aside for school work, when you are stressed?
In all those scenarios, your phone is serving a purpose, and one way to actually get off your phone is to provide yourself with a better option to fill that need. For example, during my breaks at work, I often find myself going on my phone since I am bored. Just saying that I am not going to be on my phone during break is not enough; instead, I bring a small book to read a couple of pages. It prevents me from being bored and keeps my screen time down!
But you also do not need to go completely analog. It’s still good to switch from mindless scrolling on your phone to doing something else still on a screen. One of the hardest areas for me to cut down on my phone usage is when I come home from school. At that point, I’m tired and just want not to think for 30 minutes. One thing that I have found to be successful after school is to watch an episode of a show while doing something with my hands, such as crocheting.
While that is still screen time, I end up spending less time and am more fulfilled than just scrolling on my phone. Being aware of screen time can mean decreasing time or being more intentional about what you do. Overall, reducing screen time is hard, at least for me, but through my efforts, I have learned more about how my brain operates and what solutions do and do not work. While I have not been completely successful, I have reduced my screentime and learned more about myself, so I would count this as a success of sorts!
1. Calculated by taking the daily average (6 hours) and multiplying it by the days in a year to get 2190 hours and then dividing by 24 hours to get the amount in days. This is a reflection of the average and not of the actual real-world variations.
2. This is not paid advertising for the app; it’s just the one that I have used and liked. If there is a different screen time limiting app that you like, obviously, that is great and I would even encourage you to write a comment so people can see the other options.
