By Nick Gelling
Product Test Journalist | Kaipūrongo Whakamātautau Hautaonga
Have you spent too long staring at your handheld attention box over summer? I know I have. Now’s the time to break from the habit so it doesn’t drag on for the entire year.
Don’t be ashamed for feeling addicted to your phone. It’s extremely common. So much of the digital world is designed to keep you glued to your screen so you’ll consume as many ads as possible. Companies spend huge money optimising software to hook you in. Then, they employ all manner of psychological tricks to get you staying longer and returning regularly.
Our attention is under attack. But, thankfully, there are ways to fight back.
1. Turn off push notifications for your most demanding apps
It happens to us all. You receive a notification to your lock screen. You slip onto your phone and deal with it in 10 seconds. Then, before you know it, 15 minutes have passed and you’re still scrolling.
Turning off those notifications is one of the easiest and most effective methods for detoxing from your most time-hungry apps.
Open Settings > Notifications. On an Android phone, tap App notifications, select an app and turn off notifications. On an iPhone, select an app then switch off the Allow Notifications setting.
I recommend spending 10 minutes turning off push notifications for a bunch of apps, especially those that don’t need your immediate attention.
This will encourage you to use your phone more intentionally. The notification will be waiting for you the next time you choose to open the app.
2. Make your phone less visually and aurally stimulating
Pokies use vibrant colours, high-pitched sounds and regular dopamine hits to keep you excited and engaged. Your phone does the same thing.
There’s a range of actions you can take to make your phone less tempting to the senses. Here are 3 ideas – I recommend starting at the top and progressing down until something works.
Change your lock screen and wallpaper to something dull, like a plain black background. This will give you less of a buzz when you first pick up your phone.
Mute your phone’s volume. Notification sounds pull you back onto your phone faster and more regularly. Plus, social media is less stimulating to scroll through when it’s silent. Consider turning off vibrations too – even they can trigger the dopamine that hooks us.
Change your phone’s entire colour scheme to greyscale. It’s hard to get excited about grey. Removing colour reduces visual stimulation when you’re on your phone, making it less tempting over time. You can find this option under your accessibility settings.
3. Turn off biometric unlocking
Even a tiny inconvenience can make checking your phone less appealing.
Fingerprint readers and face scanners work almost immediately, giving you instant access to your home screen. Turn them off and use a PIN instead.
If you need to punch in a code each time you pick up your phone, you might do so less often.
4. Make social media harder to access (or ditch it entirely)
Pick the social media platform(s) where you waste the most time. Then, work your way down this list until something works.
Put the app in a less convenient place. Place it in a folder labelled something like “Are you sure?”. If you have more than one page of apps, move the folder to the second page. Being required to tap a few extra times to get to something can be surprisingly effective at changing behaviour.
Remove the app’s shortcut from your home screen. You can keep the app installed in case you need it while deleting it from the main screen. You can still access it by swiping up from the bottom of your screen on Android or repeatedly swiping left on iOS.
Delete the app entirely. If you really need to log in for something, you can still visit the site in your web browser or on another device. You’ll miss the app at first, but you might be surprised how quickly your habit disappears.
5. Set yourself a screen time limit
Many parents help their kids manage healthy lifestyle balance by limiting them to a certain amount of screen time per day. Today’s phones have built-in tools to automate these controls.
If you’re determined to rebalance your own lifestyle, you can use the same tactics on yourself.
You can find these controls in your phone’s Settings menu. On an Android phone, it’s called Digital Wellbeing and parental controls or something similar. On an iPhone, navigate to Screen Time.
Both Digital Wellbeing and Screen Time record how much you use your phone over time, making it easier to track your progress. This is also where you set rules to lock down your phone. On Android, the setting is called something like Focus Mode. On iPhone, it’s Downtime.
You can schedule to temporarily disable all apps, except those you specifically allow, at particular times. For example, to be a more active parent, you might lock down your phone between getting home from work and your kids’ bedtime.
You can also set time limits for specific apps or an overall limit for a group of apps. For example, I could limit Facebook to 30 minutes a day and all my social media and messaging apps combined to 2 hours a day.
There are also free third-party apps that can help. ScreenZen adds a short delay to give you time to consider whether you really want to open an app. Forest turns staying focused into a game. You can find these apps in the Play Store and App Store.
Be kind to yourself
Phone dependency is no joke. It shares characteristics with both separation anxieties and clinical addictions.
That is to say, if you’re struggling to limit your social media use or other digital behaviours, don’t be too hard on yourself. You might not be successful on your first try, and going cold turkey might not be the right course of action. Hopefully, you can mix and match the tips above until you find a strategy that works for you.
