I write about smartphones, Android, and consumer technology for a living, but I can admit that I am addicted to the devices I use every day. I figured I need to have a firebreak and, hand on heart, it’s making me happier and healthier. If you use your phone too much, learn from my missteps.
Take five minutes to talk to anyone, and almost unanimously, there is growing discontent over how much time we’re all wasting staring at the glowing rectangles we carry around every single day.
Don’t get it twisted, I love technology. I always have and likely always will. When a brand new shiny thing is released, I want to know everything about it, and that is certainly true of my favorite mobile platform. If there’s a new Android device, I simply must know more about it, sometimes to the actual detriment of my own mental well-being.
It’s a blessing and a curse. I love my phone, but I hate that it’s making me less “present”.
Just humor me for one moment and think about your own relationship with your phone for a second. We all spend hours and hours a day just pouring our lives into a box designed to keep us engaged, scrolling, and whittling away our precious free time.
I know that comes across as a little bit exaggerated, but in the process of writing my Pixel 10 Pro Fold long-term review, I took a long, hard look at my screen-on-time stats for an average week, and I was appalled at how badly I have been addicted to my phone.
So, a week prior to Google IO, I had the catalyst. I simply must detach more from my devices.
The truth is that this had started slightly earlier.
I knew I had a problem, and initially, it all stemmed from Twitter. It was a crutch. On autopilot, when I picked up my phone, I’d open and pull down to refresh. Scroll through the news, get engrossed, and lose 20 minutes before I have had time to process what is going on.
I had some respite, though, as when Elon Musk took over Twitter, I had only just wrestled back control of my account after being hacked through a vulnerability in the email hosting service I had used and linked to my profile. His takeover came at a fortuitous moment. I had recognized my problem and decided to delete my account and data in favor of a mostly ragebait-free social media experience.
The problem was that instead of scrolling my Twitter feed every hour or so, I just replaced that with Threads, Instagram, and briefly Bluesky in an attempt to scratch an itch.
What’s more, the Digital Wellbeing tools are so easy to bypass that, if I’m honest, they may as well not be there. Tapping “Use app for 5 minutes” is just not a hurdle and never a real deterrent. I still use it for locking Slack away on a weekend, but even then, I sometimes check in on a Sunday evening to be safe, knowing the world hasn’t collapsed before Monday.
It was time for the second phase: Go nuclear.
I still have accounts on all of these services for visibility purposes, but I figured it’s time to go cold turkey. Sure, I’ll dip in with an update once in a blue moon, but for the most part, I am free of most social media platforms.
If I ever need to look at Threads, Bluesky, Instagram, etc., I lock them in my browser window. I have to go to a PC to access them, and that’s really annoying. The upside is that because it’s such a process, I tend not to do it often unless I want to share something important. I’m not completely invisible on these platforms, but I want to curb my usage, and this seems to work.
After a few months of no socials, I thought I was doing well. What I then realized was that I had suddenly become very addicted to…Reddit.
Any free time, any spare moment meant diving into subreddits and niche hobbies I have.
I’d migrated my scrolling into something I thought was productive. If you’re not aware, Reddit is not productive at all. Getting into arguments over yellow cards in Champions League games, discussing inconsequential side quests in Cyberpunk, I was becoming the stereotypical “Redditor,” and I had to start my detox all over again because I fell into the same trap yet again.
It turns out that when we’re talking about our phones, it’s very easy to substitute one service for another.
Nobody is going to ditch their phone now, right? I use Uber too much, I need Maps when I’m driving, and Google Wallet is essential for me. Heck, my phone is my car key, so I can just ditch it.
Every time I feel the urge to grab my phone, I now pick up something else entirely.
I even stopped taking my phone to the toilet/bathroom.
Hey, it sounds disgusting, but we all do it. You go to the bathroom, and you take your phone, and 99 times out of 100, you’re scrolling, texting, or doing something to whittle away your “business time.” I figured maybe when there are deals to be done, I would leave my phone in my pocket or just put it somewhere else.
We’re going in there to take care of business, not to read the daily news. The uplift has been that I spend less time in the bathroom – which is always a bonus!
If I want to watch a movie, I have started forcing myself to go to the cinema/movie theater to watch things because it forces me to focus on the movie rather than being background noise. When I’m watching a TV show at home, I just leave my phone in my bedroom or my office. I figured I don’t need to know how many Emmys Better Call Saul was nominated for and didn’t win – it’s 53 for what it’s worth, and it deserved at least one win.
Gaming has always been a key component in my life, so if I simply must be distracted while watching TV, I’ll play something on my Switch or Steam Deck. Playing through my gaming backlog is a way better use of my time than arguing with idiots on the internet or watching YouTube Shorts about the most inane things. Every time the call of the “scroll hole” arrives, I try to pick up a controller. If I’m gaming, I’m at least doing something fun and potentially productive.
My bed is now a no-go area for my phone. I’m lucky enough that I have never really needed an alarm to wake up on time every day. However, if I need to get up early for something, my Nest Hub handles that for me. My phone stays on charge at the opposite side of my room on a cabinet inside my wardrobe, so if there were an emergency, it’s still somewhat within reach, but there’s no temptation to just grab it and mindlessly scroll in bed.
Instead, I read for up to 45 minutes in bed. I keep a little Boox 6-inch e-reader on my nightstand instead of my phone. Weirdly, it does run Android, but is so underpowered that anything beyond an e-book is not really a great experience. It can barely open a website without breaking into a sweat, so it stops me from trying to deviate from reading.
