10 tips on how to break up with your phone
A couple of years ago, whilst browsing in a shop in Santa Barbara, California, I came across the book ‘How to break up with your phone’ by Catherine Price. I immediately bought a copy to give to a friend of mine, who, at that time, was addicted to Candy Crush and would spend hours and hours on her phone. Since she no longer does so, I can only assume that the book did the trick.
Being a Psychiatrist specialising in the assessment and management of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), I daily come across people telling me that they spend hours and hours on their phones, often to the detriment of their studies, work, relationships and/or sleep. To help them, I have recently re-visited Catherine Price’s book.
Based on Catherine’s insights, as well as my own (personal and professional) experience, I have come up with the following 10 tips on how to break up with your phone:
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Why break up with your phone
To change an undesired behaviour or habit (in this case, to break up with your phone), first, you have to want to change it. Even if you follow all these tips, your behaviour won’t change, unless you really want to change it. Someone else saying that your behaviour needs to change is simply not enough. To succeed, you have to want this change too.
So, you want to break up with your phone. Fair enough. Before you proceed, however, it is important to know why you want to break up with your phone. What are the disadvantages right now? What would the advantages be once you break up with your phone?
Now, that’s a good place to start your journey. But, before you embark on this journey, take a minute to reflect on the advantages of your current behaviour (surely there are some, otherwise you wouldn’t have become addicted to your phone in the first place). Also, take a moment to think of possible disadvantages of breaking up with your phone.
Now, balance out the advantages and disadvantages you’ve identified. A 2×2 table, like the one below, might actually help you here.
| Being addicted to your phone | Breaking up with your phone | |
| Advantages | RED | GREEN |
| Disadvantages | GREEN | RED |
With this in mind, do you really want to break up with your phone? Are your greens more important than your reds? If the answer is no, then that’s OK, perhaps this is not the right time to break up with your phone. If the answer is yes, continue reading.
2. Know your data
Now that you’ve made a conscious decision to break up with your phone, it’s time to gather and examine some data.
Every Monday morning, my i-phone notifies me of my daily average screen time from the week before. I make the assumption here that most people wanting to break up with their phone actually want to reduce their screen time (and specifically the time they spend on social media, dating apps and games), rather than their total phone usage. I recently found out that my i-phone also monitors how much time I spend on each app (both daily and weekly); it also gives the breakdown by category (for me, ’social’ is by far the most popular).
I would imagine that most smartphones provide similar features, so let’s now take a closer look at the data already gathered:
How many hours of screen time do you spend each day?
Of those, how many hours do you spend on social media/dating apps/games?
Which specific apps are the ones you spend the most time on?
3. Set a SMART goal
If you simply say you want to break up with your phone, or that you want to reduce your screen time or your social media usage, and set off to do this, you’re probably doomed to fail. Why? Because these goals are not specific enough, they’re unrealistic and vague. What you need to do now is SMARTen up your goal. A SMART goal is:
S- specific
M- measurable
A– achievable
R- realistic
T- time-specific
So, instead of saying you want to break up with your phone, you could say that you want to have reduced your usage of certain apps (i.e. Facebook, Instagram, Tinder) by a certain amount (i.e. 50%) by a certain time (i.e. 1 month from today). Now, this is an example of a SMART goal, which means you’re more likely to successfully accomplish it. If you do, then you can set a new (perhaps more ambitious, but still SMART) goal. If you don’t, perhaps your goal may have been too ambitious, so set a new, less ambitious, one. Remember to set your goal in conjunction with the data you’ve gathered.
4. Sleep alone
Now, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty of breaking up with your phone. To do that, let’s take a step away from the phone.
Most of my patients (irrespectively of what they’re suffering with), complain of trouble sleeping. This is usually due to multiple factors, but their phone is often the number one culprit. It is widely known that electronic devices, such as smartphones, tablets, laptops, TVs, or gaming machines, emit blue light, which stimulates the brain and inhibits the production of melatonin, the hormone the body needs to sleep. So, I advise them to avoid using these devices within one to two hours before bedtime, and while they are in bed.
I will now advise you the same, irrespectively of whether or not you have trouble sleeping. Ban your phone from your bedroom. At the end of the day, do you really need your phone when you’re asleep? I personally switch mine off and leave it in a different room.
Now, you may say that you use your phone as an alarm clock. Perhaps, it’s time to buy an alarm clock. Until then, first, turn the sleep mode on, and second, place your phone as far away from you as possible. This will not only make it less likely to press the snooze button in the morning, but also to check your phone while you’re in bed (and will therefore bring you a step close to your goal).
If you don’t have a landline and need to be reachable during the night (as it happened to me when I used to be on the on-call rota), then first, make sure all the notifications are disabled (I will talk more about this later). Second, make sure your phone is located as far away from you as possible.
5. Keep your phone out of your eyesight
I have lost count of how many patients have told me that they feel compelled to check their phones during other activities, i.e. whilst working or studying (especially when they’re struggling to focus on their task), eating or relaxing (i.e. while watching a film).
This is something I can totally relate to. I personally find that I tend to check my phone when I have it right next to me, within my eyesight and arm’s reach. To avoid this, when I’m at work, I simply tuck it away in my coat’s pocket, and then hang my coat away from my chair (so, I can’t just dive in my pocket and reach for my phone). Similarly, when I meet friends for a meal or a drink, I keep my phone in a pocket rather than place it on the table.
At home, I have extended my spatial phone-free zone from my bedroom to my dining room, and my temporal phone free-zone from bedtime to meal-times. I now ban my phone from my dining table, and I would suggest you do the same, especially if you’re guilty of mindless eating, or if you have meals with other people. Also, when I want to watch a film or read a book, I try to have my phone out of my eyesight, to reduce any temptation to check it whilst engaging in these activities.
6. Turn off the notifications
Now that we’ve made some environmental modifications, let’s go back to our phones. Don’t be alarmed! On the contrary, I am now going to help you further reduce your temptation to check your phone.
If you are one of those people who can ignore the constant influx of notifications, this is great! If, however, you are like most people, unable to resist the temptation to check your phone every time it makes a sound, or every time it illuminates, then I would advise you to turn off the notifications. I have personally disabled notifications from all apps, except for the in-built messenger.
Now you might say that this may increase your tendency to check certain apps (i.e. social media and messaging apps), since you won’t be getting notifications alerting you when you have a message.
Of course, there will be times when a message may be both urgent and important. But, how often does this really happen? When it does happen, are there any alternative ways to ensure you will still get the message? For example, you can request the sender to send you a text message rather than message you on an app. Or, you can even ask them to call you.
In my personal experience, the vast majority of messages I receive are neither that important nor urgent. Considering that I am still checking my phone several times a day (during designated times), I have not found that disabling notifications has resulted in my missing important or urgent messages (the same applies to e-mails).
What I have found, however, is that I still have that compelling urge to check my phone, in case there might be such a message waiting. This is where the next two tips come in handy.
7. Be mindful
Mobile phones can be very useful tools. In fact, it is rather unrealistic to expect people not to have mobile phones these days. Social media can be useful too. At the end of the day, they help us connect with people (or at least this is what they should be doing).
The reality, however, is that most of us use our phones and social media mindlessly, in a way that is automatic and habitual and doesn’t serve a specific purpose.
Catherine Price encourages us to ask 3 questions every time we automatically reach for our phone:
- What for?
- Why now?
- What else?
To reduce this mindless use of your phone (and the unnecessary screen time), next time you reach for your phone, try to answer these questions first, and then make a decision as to whether you really want to use your phone.
There are many reasons why we want to use our phones. These can range from ‘legitimate’ reasons (i.e. make a call, send a message, take a photo), to checking (especially when notifications are disabled), or simply killing time. If you have a legitimate reason to use your phone, then go for it. If, instead, you want to check something, you may want to consider the second question (and read the next tip). If you’re simply bored and want to kill time, then you may want to consider the third question (and read tip no 9).
8. Set time-zones
Going cold turkey of a habit works for some people, but not for everyone. This is why I don’t routinely recommend ditching your phone or deleting all these apps that suck your time. Instead, I am an advocate of using them mindfully and in moderation.
Although most of the tips above can help you reduce your phone usage, turning off the ever-so-distracting notifications may increase your tendency to check your phones. This is where being mindful helps. But, what do you do once you identify that this tendency to check is the reason why you’ve reached for your phone?
Rather than resist it, or simply give in to it, I would suggest you acknowledge it and then practise the art of delayed gratification. Instead of checking your phone there and then (instant gratification), I suggest you decide (beforehand) when the best time to do so would be, as well as how much time you want to spend on your phone (and stick to it).
Personally, I allow myself to check these apps for a few minutes when I take a break from work and when I finish work. Although I may still be scrolling mindlessly then, at least, I mindfully allow myself to mindlessly use my phone.
9. Find an alternative and just do it
When I used to commute to work, I noticed that almost every person on the train was on their phone. I suspect they were only killing time. That was when I decided that I did not want to kill 2 hours every single day (this is basically the equivalent of a whole month in a year). Instead, I wanted to do something more productive than scrolling through my Instagram or Facebook feed. I decided I would rather spend that time reading books. So, when I returned home, I picked a book from my bookcase and put it in my bag. From the following day, instead of reaching for my phone during my commute, I started reaching for a book, each week a different one.
But, that’s just me. You may want to do other things in your free time. Simply, take a moment now to think about what it is you’d rather do, and -to borrow a popular motto- just do it!
10. How to break up with your phone
Last but not least, if you’d like more tips on how to break up with your phone, I would strongly recommend reading Catherine Price’s book. ‘How to break up with your phone’ is divided into two parts: ‘the wake-up’ and ‘the break-up’. The first part is a wake-up call, explaining why phones are so addictive and why this is a problem. The second part is basically a 30-day plan to help you limit your phone usage. Too good to be true? May I now remind you that it worked for my Candy-crush-addicted friend. So, I am pretty confident it will work for you too.
Alex
(the Traveling Psychiatrist)