Help Phone addiction

[Nitlott]

Anyone here achieved anything battling their phone addiction? Won't fully quit it (at least now) but want to reduce screen time.
From all social media apps, I have Pinterest, YouTube and telegram.
Deleted tiktok years ago and never had Instagram. So maybe it'll be less hard to do for me. Right now on average I spend 5h on yt, ≈2h on pin, 1h47m on chrome lately and 51m on tg. And 2h on ReadEra, no idea how, maybe it synced with my tablet where I have my textbooks. No games too, solitaire or sudoku online if I feel like it.
But one of the nuances is that, most of the time, I pick a video on yt and play it in the background while I'm doing something. So it's not clear how much time I spent actually watching content. Always listening to something, whether it's a video or a song, is also one of my problems.
I heard of apps that make the entire screen gray-scale, so it doesn't look as tempting as usual. It also looks really cool. ScreenZen also seems to be a popular pick. Heard that you can even block out yt shorts there, no idea if on the website or in app though.
Other relevant things... Watch history disabled for the last 5 years, so there's no feed. Only the "recommended" stuff under a video I picked. 4 subscriptions too if it changes anything. How do you think it's better to start? And from where too, or you just go with the flow without a plan? I think I'll try out one of the gray-scale apps today

 

[LaetumCat]

I'm not sure if it helps anyhow, but if you have a problem like you can't stop watching shorts for example, you can directly on yt set reminders that pop up to tell you to take a break. You can easily just click the "x" button to go back to watching tho, which is kinda... Idk, I'm not a fan of that feature, but it helps if you forget and just doomscroll.

 

[Nitlott]

...you can directly on yt set reminders that pop up to tell you to take a break.

Yeah, I had it a year ago and it didn't really do anything to be honest. I mean, it just became an another inconvenience and I just closed it every time it popped up without fully realising that I already wasted 2 hours (or whatever time I picked then). Maybe it's a me problem though

 

[owo]

try to read physical books

≈2h on pin

thats TOO a lot
even if you are looking for some references (in case of you are doing something like art)
just try to open it like 1-2 times/week

try to read physical books

as a replacement of phone addiction

if you just decrease time of using phone -> getting bored too fast

books its just an example

 

[MapleS]

Without phone my ability to be happy for a momment went back.
but no yt, no scrolling, no netflix, no webtoons, music is gine and we ball for a moth
First step: NO VIDEOS IN THE BACKGROUND. You either watch it fully or not. Unless you have adhd-
But you are already going in good direction. Tried books? Crafting things? Going for a walk?
And timer for pinterest

 

[Nitlott]

Tried books? Crafting things? Going for a walk?

Not really a book person, rarely read (embarrassing...), maybe I'll figure something out. I do craft often, one of the rare times when I (kinda) watch what I picked from time to time and forgive myself for it. I also want to start going on walks say, 1 time a week at least (walking for the sake of it, no destination) but I'm always with headphones. Still better than not knowing where my time went though.
I have 4 cds and when I listen to them it feels good because I'm "offline" or something...
Thinking about this, I'll be taking a bunch of exams soon by the end of this term so I think cds and 80 (!) variants of that math test I need to solve will help me reduce screen time whether I like it or not lol.

 

[dreaming]

tbh my phone is so ass it's hard for me to be addicted to using it since it's so slow and has short battery life.
I kinda hate short-form content so I stopped using instagram actively after they introduced reels and never engaged with YouTube shorts.
I have pinterest and YouTube but I don't really use them super frequently except when looking for art tutorials or something, I also have discord installed but no one really talks to me.
my most used app is soundcloud/youtube to listen to music.

I do the same thing with YouTube though, have either a video or music in the background when doing other things like washing dishes(makes it much more tolerable), I guess generally I try to use it more productively when I can.

I spend a *lot* more time on YouTube on my computer though, but again mostly just as background noise while I do other things, that just comes from me being on my computer soooo frequently.

I have 4 cds and when I listen to them it feels good because I'm "offline" or something...
Thinking about this, I'll be taking a bunch of exams soon by the end of this term so I think cds and 80 (!) variants of that math test I need to solve will help me reduce screen time whether I like it or not lol.

I got my first vinyl last year, I wanna get more vinyls and CD's if I get the chance, I also have an mp3 player which I like since it's "offline" like you said but I can't find the charger for it so I haven't used it lately.

I heard of apps that make the entire screen gray-scale, so it doesn't look as tempting as usual. It also looks really cool. ScreenZen also seems to be a popular pick. Heard that you can even block out yt shorts there, no idea if on the website or in app though.
Other relevant things... Watch history disabled for the last 5 years, so there's no feed. Only the "recommended" stuff under a video I picked. 4 subscriptions too if it changes anything. How do you think it's better to start? And from where too, or you just go with the flow without a plan? I think I'll try out one of the gray-scale apps today

I have something for disabling YouTube shorts but it's only for PC as far as I'm aware, I can still send it to you if you like though.

 

[itsitbit]

Ahh!! I'm also struggling with phone addiction. I use a Samsung so I toggle greyscale on in the accessibility settings, I have it set up so I have a shortcut to turn it on and off easily at any time (I barely do this lol). I also have an automatic routine that turns the grayscale on at the same time every night, when I'm supposed to be going to bed.

To be honest it doesn't make me stop using my phone at night entirely but it is a very visible and sudden reminder that it's late, so I feel like it's still somewhat helpful. I also have a routine that disables access to certain apps at my bedtime but I just keep turning it off. I think cutting off access to large swathes of my phone doesn't work for me as an approach, because it ends up feeling way too "big" and ... punitive? I end up getting so annoyed that I just ignore and navigate past it outright, whereas methods that are more like "soft reminders" without cutting me off entirely, like the grayscale thing, ends up easing me into choosing to put my phone away.

I saw someone on reddit somewhere who made a "visual noise" sticker to put over their phone screen, it was literally like a transparent film covered in wiggly lines. I think the way they said it worked is that by making their phone screen somewhat unpleasant to look at (but still accessible and readable), it creates this "mental friction" that helps to offset phone addiction. I dunno if that might work for you and I haven't tried it because I think it would annoy me too much, but it's an interesting idea!

I also saw a post somewhere where someone made a little dollhouse room with a bed for their phone to live, so when they would put down their phone they would tuck it in and think of it as getting its rest. That way they felt bad about picking it up and "waking" it, haha. It sounded very cute and sweet to me! Maybe having a dedicated space to put down your phone to "rest" could help with avoiding having it at hand all the time (at home at least)

I relate to how hard it is to keep track of actual screentime when you use your phone to play stuff in the background!! I love putting random ambience on but I feel it definitely skews my data a lot.

Wishing you much luck!! Thank you for making this thread, it's nice to see everyone chime in with different suggestions c:

 

[CleanGopher]

try to read physical books

thats TOO a lot
even if you are looking for some references (in case of you are doing something like art)
just try to open it like 1-2 times/week

as a replacement of phone addiction

if you just decrease time of using phone -> getting bored too fast

books its just an example

Books are a good alternative! So is drawing and anything creative, something good with creativity too is listening to music while doing it, and an easy way to get into a book even with a small attention span is through reading short stories, my fav short story collection is "greatest hits" by Harlan Ellison :3

 

[Fresh Soju]

and an easy way to get into a book even with a small attention span is through reading short stories

Books with shorter chapters help as well, as you can make it a goal to read one chapter a day,which is around 10-15 min each, so it's not too big of a deal if you don't have much of a drive one day to red.

 

[CleanGopher]

Books with shorter chapters help as well, as you can make it a goal to read one chapter a day,which is around 10-15 min each, so it's not too big of a deal if you don't have much of a drive one day to red.

Yea that's totally fair and a good alternative too

 

[Fresh Soju]

Yea that's totally fair and a good alternative too

Has the same effect on me as binging TV-shows or something.
"Just one more chapter!" and suddenly it's been an hour or more, lol.

 

[tipoftheRGB]

I pay for an appblocker called StayFocused and I have a free website blocker called ColdTurkey and they are really strict and work amazingly for me.