Digital Detox: The Best Ways to Beat Smartphone Addiction

Every day, a smartphone gives us ominous numbers about the time spent in front of the screen – 3-4 hours and even more. That is, we sit on the phone for a sixth part of our lives, unable to tear ourselves away from it. Where can you find these powers?

Imagine you are sitting in a cafe with a friend for only half an hour, but the phone has already been picked up 20 times. Of course, you yourself did not consider this – a disgruntled interlocutor did it for you. Do you recognize yourself? Probably yes, but you have a list of excuses: breaking news, another like on Instagram, or a funny video sent by your best friend. Ask yourself a simple question: how many hours a day do you spend with your smartphone in your hands? If less than four, congratulations – you’re all right. But more than that, you seem to have lost control of how you let technology into your life. There are several popular methods on how to restore it.

The idea is quite simple: for a month, limit the number of hours you spend with your smartphone in your hands every day. During this time, you will overcome the habit of just grabbing your phone. Computer science professor Cal Newport, who wrote the aptly titled Digital Minimalism, suggests that the best way to clean up works is to delete apps like Instagram and Facebook and stop using them for 30 days. It is assumed that even after you download them again, you no longer want to spend all your free time on the Web. This is also the opinion of American author Kathryn Price, as she writes in her guide How to Break Up with Your Phone: The 30-Day Plan to Take Your Life Back.

It is likely that a 30-day “cleansing” may seem to someone too radical a solution to the problem. Perhaps a reasonable digital diet plan is 15 minutes a day on Instagram and five minutes on Facebook. Productivity will immediately improve once you stop being a slave to companies that sell your data to advertisers.

• On the iPhone, you can set the app limit in Screen Time in Settings. Just set a time limit for a specific app and the program will warn you five minutes before the limit expires. You will no longer be able to use the app. True, the restriction can be bypassed by setting a special password.
• Some versions of Android have a similar Digital Wellbeing feature, but most users need to download the app of the same name. It really blocks an avid instagrammer if he has exceeded the limit – no passwords will help here. The Facebook and Instagram apps also have features to limit time and block notifications.

On the other hand, it is difficult to predict when an application might be required. There is a force majeure at work, and you need to urgently replace a colleague, or a pipe leaked at home, and you cannot answer in the messenger because it is blocked – there can be a lot of unforeseen situations.

If you don’t want to endlessly set the settings on your smartphone, the way out may be to buy the good old Nokia “brick” without the bells and whistles. It has limited internet access. True, there is something counterintuitive about buying an additional phone to get rid of the dependence on the smartphone you already have on hand, but these are the details. If you are of the same opinion, or if you have no desire to spend money on a new gadget, turn your iPhone into a “primitive” phone by blocking applications in Screen Time in the Rest section. You can do the same with the Digital Wellbeing Android app.

Despite the technical tools available, many users set their own rules for screen time rationing. Some remove the Facebook and Instagram apps from their phones and access the services only from their computers. Others go the other way, configuring these apps to work only on Wi-Fi.

If you have problems with self-discipline, and Apple and Google services do not save you, a special detox retreat may help. There are, for example, on the Spanish island of Ibiza – a week of rest without a phone will cost you $ 2, excluding flights. But paying that kind of money to have someone take your smartphone from you is strange enough. Perhaps you should consider the option of regular trips out of town, where the connection simply does not catch.

The shielding case works on the principle of a Faraday cage – the mobile phone is no longer affected by external electromagnetic fields. Such covers block calls, SMS messages, push notifications – in general, they keep the phone practically in an inactive state.

Another seemingly obvious way to miss the phone every ten minutes is to simply turn it off: for an hour or two or three, or even for a whole day. If this does not help, buy a special safe. Yes, yes, there is such a thing. This is a kind of “box against procrastination”, on which you set the term for locking your smartphone. The safe will not open until the designated time has passed.

What if all the color pictures and even the interface of your smartphone suddenly became black and white? You, at least, would not want to scroll through the Instagram feed anymore. So take advantage of this by setting the monochrome mode.

• If you have an iPhone, in the “Settings” go to “General”, then to “Accessibility”, then to “Display adaptation”. Click “Light Filters” and activate the button with the same name.
• If you have Android, in the “Settings” go to the item “About phone”, then click on the “Build number” seven times in a row (if you have Xiaomi, you need to click on the line “MIUI version”). You get developer rights. Then you need to return to the main menu and open the “For developers” section, then – “Hardware accelerated rendering” and “Simulate anomaly”. After you need to select the item “Monochrome Mode”.

So, as the number of incoming messages approaches infinity, many are beginning to realize that they are spending more and more time “staring” at the phone, and that something needs to be done about it. But at the same time, it seems that giving up gadgets is akin to suicide. And being alone with your thoughts even a few hours a day in 2020 is a very strange feeling. A kind of existential malaise.

Technological giants are well aware of such human throwing. That is why they promote the need for a digital detox and at the same time advertise their products. For example, a commercial for the Amazon Audible app with audiobooks shows a lost woman whose phone shows memes, cats, news, food, men… Finally, she plugs in her headphones, starts listening to an audiobook, and the surrounding chaos disappears.

Today, our “digital wellness” has become a promising area of ​​business. It seems that technology companies should primarily focus on reducing the harm from their devices, rather than on the apparent compensation of the addiction that gadgets plunge us into.

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