Screen Time for Grown-Ups

I'm taking away your phone now

It’s become a little cliché to bemoan the things that you hated as a kid and would love to have now: an enforced naptime, a bedtime, putting away your dishes and doing minor chores in exchange for free food and board. A private chef? What a life of luxury!

Here’s another to add to the list- someone taking away your phone and other devices. I don’t have to convince you that we’re on our screens too much. I try very hard to limit my phone screen time to three hours, which if you keep track of your screen time might not seem like much, and if you don’t keep track of your phone screen time will seem like an inordinate amount of time! That’s because it is, and that’s just time on my phone that doesn’t include time on my laptop, iPad, and Kindle, and I’m usually on all of those every single day. That is… a lot of screens. A lot of my waking time. A lot of our waking time.

Phones give us a lot. Connection through text, calls, podcasts, and video messages. Debatable connection through social media. The many newsletters that I love to read.

The increasingly popular ‘dopamine fast’ is when you temporarily refrain from social media and other things that give you a quick boost of dopamine, which is what we’re looking for when we mindlessly go on Instagram, Tiktok, Reddit, Hinge, et al. It’s what I do when a project I’m working on is difficult and I’m desperate for a break. Maybe I should go for a walk around the block or speak to someone in my office, but my phone is right there in my desk drawer. I compulsively put my phone on airplane mode, but that doesn’t stop me from getting on it extremely often. I work hard not to get on my phone early in the day and aspire to leave it on airplane mode from about 10PM-9AM. That’s a long time with it off, and I’m still on it three hours a day!

I notice that when my screen time for the day is 2 hours or less I am happier. I have a widget on my home screen that tracks my screen time. Here is a simple tutorial if you’d like one too. If you haven’t looked at yours recently check it out, you might be surprised!

I also recommend simplifying your home screen and moving time sucking apps to make them a little harder to access. Experts suggest changing your phone display to grayscale so it’ll be less appealing. Grayscale is too sad to me, but it could be worth a shot.

I’m not here to actually take your phone away, but here are a few tips to use it less.

• Institute time when you do not use your phone. Figure out what you need to do. Do you need to turn it off and put it in the other room during dinner and TV time? Do not disturb mode helps stop me from constantly picking it up at every notification.

• On days when you feel particularly down or frazzled check your screen time. Check in with how you feel before you decide to get on Instagram or your drug of choice and how you feel after. What precipitated it? Do you feel better or worse when you’re done? Just being aware is a good thing.

• I’ve begun reading a book on my Kindle app in spare moments. It doesn’t decrease my screen time, but it feels better than scrolling on every form of social media until my thumbs fall off.

None of these are revolutionary, but being attached to smart phones 24/7 is still new and I think we need to interrogate how we feel using them. Sometimes we might need to have it on and within reach constantly, whether it is for work, children, or a sick relative. However, often we have our phones on and within arm’s reach all the time without questioning if boundaries are an option. Do you need to receive Slack notifications on the weekend? Maybe not!

Turn your phone off for an hour the next time you need to do some deep work or just want to relax and see how you feel!

x Alex