How to break a phone addiction
Quiet Wall ·
What people mean by phone addiction, why the habit is so hard to break, and the changes that make the phone less automatic to reach for.
What people mean by phone addiction
Mostly a habit that no longer feels chosen. You unlock the phone without deciding to, lose twenty minutes to it, put it down, and pick it up again an hour later for no reason you could name.
"Addiction" is the everyday word for it rather than a diagnosis. The manual psychiatrists use, the DSM-5, does not list smartphone addiction as a condition. That does not make the habit any less real. It means that for most people the way out is practical rather than clinical. If it is badly affecting sleep, work or the people around you, a doctor or a therapist is the right person to talk to.
Why the habit is so hard to break
- it is always within reach; no other habit follows you into the bathroom
- it fills the gaps that used to be empty: queues, buses, ad breaks
- most of the apps on it are built to bring you back
- the cue is everywhere: a moment of boredom, a pause in a conversation, a hand with nothing in it
Willpower is up against all four at once, all day, which is why changing the surroundings tends to get further than trying harder.
Change the place, not the willpower
- charge the phone outside the bedroom, and use an alarm clock instead
- keep it in a bag or another room during meals and while working
- turn off notifications for anything that is not a person
- move the apps you reach for most off the home screen, or delete them and use the browser
- some people find that greyscale, in the accessibility settings, makes the screen less interesting to look at
Each of these makes picking the phone up a decision again rather than a reflex. None of them needs anything to be given up for good.
Replace the gap
The habit survives because the gap it fills is uncomfortable. Take the phone out of the gap and the discomfort is still there, so decide in advance what goes in it instead: a walk, a page of a book, a conversation, or nothing at all.
Nothing at all is the one people skip, and the one that goes straight at the habit. A few minutes of leaving a gap empty is practice at the thing the phone has made rare.
Use the phone against itself
- the iPhone's own Screen Time can give apps a daily time allowance, and set a schedule for when they are available
- some apps put a pause in front of an app before it opens; others block apps for a set time
- Quiet Wall is a timer for the empty gap: a reminder arrives, the phone goes across the room, and you look at a blank wall until a sound brings you back
Expect the reach to outlast the decision
Long after you have stopped meaning to, your hand will go for the phone out of habit. That is not a failure. Each time you notice, put it back down, and the noticing is the part that counts.
Is phone addiction a real addiction?
It is not a medical diagnosis: the DSM-5 does not list it. The habit is real, and for most people the way out is practical rather than clinical.
How do I stop being addicted to my phone?
Make it harder to reach where you usually use it, turn off notifications that are not from people, and decide what goes in the gaps instead.
Read on
- What to do instead of scrolling — Stopping scrolling is the easy part. The hard part is the gap it leaves. Twelve things to put there instead, starting with nothing at all.
- The best screen time apps for iPhone — Screen time apps do different things: block, pause, compete or empty the room. Eight of them grouped by what they do, with prices from the App Store.