At some point this past summer, I decided I needed to find ways to stop myself from using my phone.
Not completely, of course. Smartphones are obviously handy pieces of technology that replaced what used to be a myriad of dedicated devices. I cannot imagine getting rid of my phone and going back to needing a separate camera, audio player, and navigation system, for instance. I still wanted to have a phone when I needed it, but I also wanted to stop using it compulsively.
To be clear, my goal hasn't been to reduce my overall screen time. I am not concerned with the amount of time I spend sitting at a computer. Computers, after all, are a central part of my life, both career-wise and hobby-wise. What I wanted to eliminate was specifically involuntarily screen time. For example, I would sometimes sit with a book intending to read it and end up scrolling Reddit for two hours instead. Other times I would just pull out my phone for no reason while walking, cooking, shopping, or doing anything really. There were also times when I would answer a non-urgent message and then end up engaging in a thirty-minute conversation when I really meant to do something else.
And so I embarked on a journey to make my phone usage as intentional and minimal as possible. I think I can now say this journey ended in success: in the past two months I have mostly not found myself using my phone without intent. Below I will break down the steps of my journey, divided between things I tried that didn't work, things I considered but didn't do, and what eventually worked for me.
What I Tried That Didn't Work
This part of my journey actually started months before I even knew I was on that journey. Some time around the end of last year or the beginning of this year, I started checking news websites compulsively, multiple times a day. Let's say the news cycle got particularly stressful around that time, related to, um, my country's downstairs neighbor suddenly becoming louder and scarier. This problem was not exclusive to my phone, as I would also check the news on my computer. I eventually realized how bad this was for my mental health and decided I needed to limit my news consumption. So I stopped visiting news websites altogether and subscribed to their daily newsletters instead. This way, I would only consume news once or twice a day and would not get updates until the next newsletter. To enforce not randomly visiting news sites, I installed an extension on my browser (both on mobile and desktop) called LeechBlock NG. This extension allows you to create lists of blocked websites and supports options such as time conditions.
I actually stuck with newsletters as my primary means of news consumption to this day, so this part had some success. The part that ended up not working was the website blocking. I mean, it worked a little, for a while, and I even added other filters unrelated to news when I decided I needed to reduce my overall phone use. The problem with website blocking is that there's always a way to circumvent it, and I would find myself doing it "just this time," and eventually "just this time" became the norm.
Of course, there are ways to set blocking to be more aggressive and therefore more difficult to circumvent. I was not willing to take that route, though, as I didn't want to prevent myself from accessing something when I actually needed to.
Another thing I tried was removing the web browser from my home screen. That helped a little at first, but eventually I would just open my app drawer and scroll down to my browser anyway.
What I Considered but Didn't Do
At some point in my journey, I fantasized about going back to a flip phone. This was never a realistic option though. There are some functions of a smartphone that I just don't really want to go without. Email, Android Auto and TOTP are some examples.
During my research I stumbled across an interesting device called the Minimal Phone. It is an e-ink Android phone with a physical keyboard. Its concept is that it won't prevent you from doing anything, but it will sure as heck make you not want to do it. In other words, it is a phone deliberately designed to be extremely annoying to use while still letting you do anything you would normally do with a phone if you really need to.
The Minimal Phone seemed exactly what I needed, but I wasn't willing to spend hundreds of dollars on a new phone while my current one was still perfectly good. So I did not go down that path in the end.
What I Ended Up Sticking With
In the end, I decided to simply dumb down my current Android phone.
I deleted the few social media apps I still had, but that wasn't enough: the browser also had to go. That being said, I did not want to have no browser at all on my phone. There are just situations in which I really need to be able to go on a website on my phone. So in the spirit of the Minimal Phone, I decided to ditch Firefox (Chrome was already disabled) and replace it with something that is technically a web browser that can technically be used if I really need to, but is inconvenient enough that I won't want to use it. I found an app on the IzzyOnDroid F-Droid Repository called WebMonkey, which is literally just a WebView with an address bar. It has no tabs, no integrated search, no bookmarks, nothing.
Next I changed my Android launcher to something minimal that would make my phone less appealing. I chose Olauncher, which is available both on the Google Play Store and F-Droid. It is a text-based launcher. This is what my phone looks like now:
As you can see, I only included some essentials on my home screen. I can still pull a text-based drawer to access other apps. There is a search feature in the drawer, but I disabled it to make sure that things aren't too convenient. I also hid some apps from the list altogether, including my minimal browser, the Play Store, and F‑Droid. These apps remain accessible from the launcher's options if needed.
Switching to such a minimal launcher really improved things for me. I am not entirely sure why: everything is still technically accessible, yet I find myself less likely to compulsively use my phone than when I had the standard icon-based launcher. I also set Android's display settings to grayscale for a while, which helped make my phone less appealing. I later reverted to color once I felt I had things under control.
Finally, I also disabled the Always-On Display on my phone. I find this makes me less enticed to look at notifications.
Plot Twist: I Got Another Screen!
Aside from the changes I made to my phone, the biggest factor in stopping myself from using it was that I stopped carrying it around my home. Now, whenever I am home, my phone stays in my bedroom. At first there were two drawbacks to this:
- Losing a way to check the time.
- Risk of missing actually urgent notifications.
The solution to the first problem was obvious: wear a watch. Conveniently, I already owned one that I used to wear three days a year while camping (because I already refused to use my phone in these occasions). I started wearing it all the time, like I used to before owning a cellphone.
Then, toward the end of the summer, I went swimming while wearing my watch. And it died. Even though it was supposedly waterproof.
So I needed a new watch, which brought me back to my second drawback: the risk of missing urgent notifications.
I solved both drawbacks by getting a simple smartwatch that I set to display only notifications from family members. I know it sounds counterintuitive to get another screen to spend less time on my phone, but the watch I chose can't really do anything that would be a problem. It displays notifications without allowing interaction, has some fitness tracking features, and that's about it.
So far, the smartwatch approach has been a success. It gives me peace of mind that actually important notifications will be forwarded from my phone to my watch, so I don't need to check my phone all the time, whether I'm home or away. Of course, it likely only works because I chose a watch that can't do much else.
Bottomline
Not everything works the same for everybody. The route I took, which was to "dumb down" my Android phone and get a simple smartwatch for important notifications, has been working for me so far. Other strategies might suit other people better. Of course, any strategy that avoids completely getting rid of a smartphone will require some level of self-control, since there are always ways to circumvent the limits you place on your own device. I seem to have found a setup that matches my level of self-control; the same setup might not work for others.
Another important point is to define your actual objective. Some people might want to reduce overall screen time; my goal was to make screen time more intentional. For this, I basically returned to how I used the Internet in the 2000s: exclusively at my desktop computer. This is how I make it more intentional: by not carrying a device I can accidentally use anywhere in my house.