I used to use my phone way too much. Now there are days I forget to even turn it on. Here’s a list of the changes I’ve made to break the addiction, from least to most extreme:
Monochromatic Screen
Just do this one now. Go into the accessibility settings on your phone and make your screen grayscale. Takes 5 seconds, doesn’t affect any functionality, and I think it looks kinda cool once you get used to it. This won’t cure your addiction by any means, but it makes scrolling and videos a bit more mundane.
Shortcuts
The Shortcuts app on the iPhone is severely overlooked. You can quickly learn how to automate a bunch of stuff using it. One of my shortcuts automatically make the screen grayscale twice a day. This is useful because sometimes the grayscale screen would annoy me and I would turn it off, then forget to turn it back on later. Now that I use Shortcuts, my phone is pretty much always in grayscale by default.
Don’t Use Accounts
Every major website uses algorithms to grab your attention (I would never do that to you). By signing out of accounts, websites aren’t able to personalize the content as much. Disabling cookies will further prevent any sort of data they have on you. You don’t realize how addictive this customization is until it’s gone.
I found deleting unnecessary accounts to be very beneficial. Most websites are still usable without an account. In fact, I find them more pleasant because algorithms won’t silo me into one area. It’s less to worry about too, having more accounts makes it easier for your information to be stolen.
Also, delete all your social media accounts. Not the apps, the accounts. You’ll be fine.
Parental Controls
Here’s a new one, use parental controls on your phone. I used them to disable internet browsers from my phone. Also, any app that is inappropriate for 9 year olds is banned. This means I can download banking apps and whatever other utilities, but not crap like YouTube and Instagram. Screen and app limits can also be placed, but I found these unnecessary once the internet browser and social media apps were removed.
For the PIN you’ve got two options. You can make it something easy like “0000” if you’re disciplined enough. If not, then find a random number generator website, use a 4 digit number for your parental controls PIN, write the number down on a sticky note, and place the sticky note in a really annoying place. This way, you won’t unlock the parental controls unless it’s an emergency. I used this sticky note method for about a year, but now I just remember my PIN because my addiction is gone.
Flip Phone
I swear it’s not as extreme as you’d think. My flip phone is a $80 Nokia 2780. The best thing I’ve ever purchased. It can do almost everything you’d want it to do, but poorly. This is a feature. Since everything is kind of clunky, you won’t use it unless you have to. No reaching for your pocket whenever you’re bored.
“But what if I need to do blah blah blah”, don’t worry it takes the same SIM card as your smart phone. My old iPhone 12 has pretty much become an iPod Touch. It normally doesn’t have internet, but has music, a nice camera, and offline maps downloaded for GPS. My cell plan has a gigabyte of data, so I can swap the SIM card from the flip phone back to my iPhone if I really need it when traveling or something. This definitely comes in handy like once a month.
Even if you think a flip phone is too much, I still recommend it. Initially, I would only use the flip phone on weekends. It allowed me to actually relax at the end of the work week. You can stop here if you’d like, but I enjoyed the weekends with the flip phone so much that I decided to convert completely. It took months to fully swap over, but now I don’t like using my iPhone anymore!