A Simple Trick Helped Me Cut Back on Screen Time, Break My Phone Addiction

My cellular phone has hacked my interest. No make any difference where by I am or what I’m executing — brushing my teeth, seeing Tv set, or crossing a road — I discover myself incessantly scrolling and tapping on my cellphone. When I do manage to put it down, I choose it up once again a few minutes later. And the moment I choose it up, I get sucked in: I unlock my cell phone to check the weather conditions, and someway I finish up on Instagram for half an hour. Most of the time, I do not even recognize that I’m performing it. 

I am considerably from by itself. People’s screen time has shot as a result of the roof — most of us now spend about a quarter of our waking hours looking at our telephones. Even the absence of a phone’s bodyweight from their pockets is more than enough to make numerous individuals nervous. 

Scientists say that seeking at our phones is akin to pulling a slot equipment. It exploits our psychological vulnerabilities, Maria Bridge, the chief operations officer at the Middle for Humane Technology, instructed me. We are hooked to the variable dopamine benefits phones offer you like a drug addict, Bridge reported. And the constant utilization has actual consequences, investigation by a San Diego University professor has discovered that addictive telephone use is joined to melancholy, bad rest cycles, and bigger suicidal risk.

Our collective system addiction is no accident. Tech organizations have developed their apps and units to maintain you engaged for as long as probable. The essential to enabling this addictive habits is getting rid of “friction” concerning you and the telephone. Mark Zuckerberg famously reported in 2011 that he required to help “genuine-time serendipity in friction-fewer experiences.” Above a 10 years afterwards, smartphones have accomplished just that. All you have to do is pull out your cellphone, which unlocks to your dwelling screen, faucet the Instagram icon, the place you happen to be presently signed in, and movies begin playing that snag your consideration. It really is much much too simple and far much too instantaneous, and it’s very seriously affecting people’s psychological wellness. 

To check out and crack my behavior, I decided to gradual down my cellphone experience with a new application termed Just one Sec. Whilst there is irony in using an app to remedy an application habit, One particular Sec acts as far more of an intervention than a substitute. The app employs a simple trick: It asks me to breathe in advance of opening selected apps. By forcing me to be much more intentional about how I use my mobile phone, it ended up cutting down my screen time far more than any other trick I have attempted — and I have tried using them all. 

Electronic medications

Dr. Anna Lembke, a psychiatrist, professor at Stanford College, and the author of “Dopamine Country,” which explores the smartphone’s role as the “modern-day hypodermic needle for a wired technology,” explained to me that we are “getting held hostage by these digital prescription drugs.” Due to the fact our telephones are creating our brains to release dopamine all-around the clock, she spelled out, the mind adapts by lowering its personal dopamine transmission to the nerves that reward us with alerts like joy and satisfaction. This indicates that we get started relying on our telephones to keep our mind’s baseline dopamine concentrations, holding us clicking and swiping to protect against it from slipping into a deficit point out.

The results of this dopamine warping across culture have been significant. Reports have found that teens who shell out 7 several hours or much more a working day on screens are twice as likely to be identified with depression or anxiousness as people who use them for just an hour a working day. Likewise, grown ups who devote 6 hrs or additional in front of screens have a increased danger of depression. And though most of us realize the downsides, we also can’t give up. Whether or not it truly is an urgent electronic mail notification or our have to have to continue to keep up with social feeds, we invariably come across a cause to just take out our phones and jump again in.

In excess of the earlier couple many years, as scientists have uncovered the negative effects of our smartphone overuse, the incredibly companies that have facilitated our dependence — Apple, Google, Facebook, and the like — have tried using to consider up the mantle of digital-detox therapists. They have introduced equipment to observe and limit display screen time, produced it much easier for mother and father to control their kids’ smartphone use, and established boundaries on who can get in touch with you in your downtime hours. Even though these attempts are commendable, I are not able to assist but assume about the conflicting interests right here. Tech companies’ electronic well-staying tools are never ever the default, and when they are — like Instagram’s notify that you’ve viewed anything in your feed — they are constantly simple to disregard and continue to keep on scrolling. In addition, reports have revealed that items like app boundaries that merely measure your display time will not crack compulsive routines. In my knowledge, at the time the timer lifts the following working day, I’m again to fidgeting with my cellphone. These interventions are no much more than Band-Aids for tech firms, due to the fact their base line depends on retaining you hooked. 

Un-hacking the brain

I grew fatigued of how my telephone was sucking up my time, so in an endeavor to break my habit, I made a decision to devote two months working with the app One Sec, which promises to assistance split compulsive cellular phone behavior. The two-12 months-previous app is straightforward: Just before permitting me open specified apps, Just one Sec will operate a total-monitor animation — paired with a drumbeat of refined haptic vibrations — that guides me by way of a 10-2nd respiratory physical exercise. When that is completed, it gives me two selections: I could both decide on “I you should not want to open Twitter,” if I no for a longer time have the urge to check out my feed, or “Continue to Twitter.” 

Sandy Gould, a senior laptop-science lecturer at Cardiff University, has investigated strategies to control our compulsive cellphone tendencies. When we carry out actions on autopilot, Gould told me, we do not believe significantly about consequences. And most of our smartphone routines have progressed to operate on autopilot. The trick then is to change smartphone use from an automatic, compulsive motion to some thing far more intentional. Adding an intervention forces people today to be deliberate and look at “why am I opening this?” — perhaps breaking our compulsive routines. 

In contrast to display screen limitations, Just one Sec will not outright ban me from accessing Twitter. Alternatively, it enables me to replicate and choose on my individual irrespective of whether I certainly want to use the application. Immediately after a pair of days with One Sec, I recognized I was now on Twitter only when I experienced a certain intent in thoughts, these types of as responding to a information or examining what individuals are tweeting about a particular information celebration. When I would consider to mindlessly open Twitter, I felt as if A single Sec’s respiration work out was snapping me again into consciousness. 

Ian Anderson, a social-psychology researcher at University of Southern California, isn’t really surprised 1 Sec would decrease app utilization. “Placing boundaries like this assists us reevaluate our existing routines and most likely produce better social-media behavior that align a lot more with our properly-staying,” Anderson advised me.

Frederik Riedel, the German-primarily based developer of the app, instructed me that producing superior boundaries  was the motivation behind the advancement of the application. “I felt worse soon after scrolling for 30 minutes on Instagram,” he instructed me. “I requested myself: Why do I normally occur back to this application, even while I really don’t want it, and even while I come to feel worse afterward?”

In a research Riedel performed with the Max Planck Institute and the University of Heidelberg in 2022, scientists located that among the contributors who utilised A person Sec for 6 months, it diminished their app use by 57{2c3a8711102f73ee058d83c6a8025dc7f37722aad075054eaafcf582b93871a0}. I can attest to that determine: A person Sec has virtually halved my compulsive Twitter use. Just before, I was averaging 193 Twitter opens in a week, but now I only open the app 86 occasions a week. If each and every session is assumed to be a few of minutes, that indicates I’ve saved far more than a few hrs of senseless doom scrolling. 

One Sec now has close to a million downloads, according to Riedel (Sensor Tower, an impartial tracker, places the amount nearer to 600,000 downloads), and makes use of several intelligent and delicate psychological mechanisms in addition to the respiratory workout. Immediately after the 10-2nd pause, A person Sec exhibits me how quite a few instances I’ve tried using to open Twitter in the previous 24 several hours, and since I opted into the “intention picker” software, it forces me to specify why I want to open up Twitter by deciding on a single of various intentions I preset like “Work” and “Can not sleep.” The app can also mail you a “You should not get misplaced” notification soon after you have put in a handful of minutes on an app.

A widespread shortcoming of equivalent apps is that you can get applied to the tool’s interventions and start out quickly bypassing them. 1 Sec overcomes this by modifying up what it demonstrates you prior to you can open an app. From time to time it’s the respiration physical exercise, but at times it can inquire you to observe a circle on a blank display or turn on your front-struggling with camera, so you might be all of a sudden wanting at your self. Ga Turner, a neuroscience researcher and Ph.D. college student at Cambridge College, explained to me that A person Sec’s continually switching prompts steer clear of the threat that people can turn into immune to intervention over time and simply just integrate the prompt into their computerized routines. Bridge, from the Centre for Humane Engineering, has been a Just one Sec consumer for months and managed to get her impulsive e-mail habits beneath manage. She instructed me that the small psychological components are what makes this app so effective.

The only grievance I have about A single Sec is that its browser extensions and Android app are also limited and deficiency the considerable selection of equipment identified on its Iphone counterpart. At $4 a month, its subscription cost is also on the larger side, but you will find a absolutely free version if you, like me, are searching to restrict just 1 app. 

The world-wide-web last but not least receives pace bumps

Additional businesses are making an attempt to introduce “velocity bumps” to sluggish down how swiftly we work online. When Twitter additional an added phase for retweeting tweets with hyperlinks, for case in point, the enterprise explained that 40{2c3a8711102f73ee058d83c6a8025dc7f37722aad075054eaafcf582b93871a0} more consumers read them in advance of sharing. Similarly, easy friction mechanisms like the one Twitter rolled out have been identified to be successful at stemming the tide of misinformation online.  

But usually, tech companies have small incentive to make these adjustments — specially not to the extent that people would stop applying their apps completely. Bridge believes the only route ahead is regulating the trillion-greenback attention financial state that’s “hacking our human psychology, that places gains above folks.”

And there’s some issue that added tech can only go so significantly to suppress our addictions. Even however an app like One Sec can snap me out of a compulsive habit, it will not kick me off of the cell phone altogether. On some events, when 1 Sec prevented me from entering an app like Instagram, I basically moved to a unique one I hadn’t blocked still. 

Eventually, people will want to crack away from the products fully alternatively than making use of tricks and hacks.  “At some level, we have to have to separate from the equipment them selves in buy to let our brains rest and recover,” Lembke, the psychiatrist and professor,  told me. “It’s not just a make a difference of what we are executing on our telephones. It is really also the sheer quantity of time we commit looking at them, keeping them, swiping them, almost as if they are alive and we’re their caretakers.”  

At stake is not only our mental well being but also our ability to think. Phones permit us to fill pockets of free of charge time and boredom instead of employing that time more deliberately, Adam Alter, a marketing professor at the New York College Stern University of Enterprise and the writer of “Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Organization of Maintaining Us Hooked,” explained.

“We are small-circuiting our means to be innovative — to drive towards the apparent, which tends to occur when we’re idle, bored, or not focusing intently on a certain strategy,” he extra. 

For now, working with resources that can assistance us be more intentional about how we devote our time online is an vital action toward breaking our collective telephone habit. If my experience is any indicator, applications like A single Sec can be effective to counteract poor patterns. A handful of weeks into working with the application, it was apparent to me that I was not addicted to Twitter or Instagram — I had just formed a compulsive behavior that unintentionally steered me to all those applications all over the working day. The moment I was capable to recognize that habit, it was uncomplicated for me to split totally free and reclaim the shed several hours.


Shubham Agarwal is a freelance technological innovation journalist from Ahmedabad, India whose do the job has appeared in Wired, The Verge, Rapid Firm, and far more.