The Dumbphone Challenge: How To Take Back Your Time From Social Media
This week, I decided to take action to eliminate something that I felt was a growing problem in my life: increasing smartphone use.
I’ve never considered myself to be a heavy smartphone user: I can’t stand scrolling through Instagram for more than a minute or two, Twitter I get into from time to time but usually end up falling away from right away because of all the arguing, and it’s just way too much of a pain to make regular videos to post on TikTok. My biggest smartphone vice would be YouTube, which I do tend to spend a lot of time on, whether it be just for listening to music while I work or watching videos on new renewable energy tech, climate change news, or people living off the grid. I also geek out and get way too excited every time Mark Rober uploads a video (so good, best channel on YouTube IMO).
However, ever since the move to a new home and adjusting to a new life, I’ve been unusually tired and sluggish every day and it’s started to feel like just a day at work completely drains me. Where my extra time used to be practicing piano/viola, walking the dog, or reading, recently I’ve taken to filling time with smartphone use or video games. With the increase in smartphone use, I’ve noticed a sharp increase in tendencies to reach out and grab it with every spare moment. Despite that gross-feeling subconscious reaction, my smartphone was continuing to rise.
Identify The Problem: You’re Addicted
How do I know for sure? Because I checked. These days almost every smartphone tracks how much time you’re on it, just like it tracks every thing else about you, from your likes and dislikes, to where you are at every moment of the day, and what triggers you to pick up your phone. On my phone, there’s a “Digital Wellbeing” app that I opened up to learn that sure enough, my phone usage over the past couple months has steadily increased to the point where I’m on my phone for 3+ hours a day. That’s 1/8 of my time. If I take out time when I’m sleeping, it’s 1/5th of my time. 20% of my time staring at a smartphone. That’s time when:
- I’m not contributing to my family or my community
- I’m not doing anything that makes money
- I’m not doing anything that improves my mind, my skills, or even my mental wellbeing
Granted, some of that time I use to study Korean on Duolingo or send emails to politicians and companies demanding climate action through the Climate Action Now app, but the vast majority of my time is NOT doing either of those things.
I highly recommend that you open the equivalent app on your phone and check out what your smartphone usage is like. I bet it’ll shock you how much of your life you’re losing to your phone.
Go ahead. Guess how many hours a day you think you’re spending on your phone.
Now go check the app. I’ll wait.
…
How bad was it? How did it make you feel?
Breaking the Addiction
Time for a change challenge! Dumbphone, here I come.
So I’ve decided to act. At least on a trial basis, just to see if I can do it, and what kind of positive and negative effects it will have on my life. I propose to myself, a challenge to convert my smartphone into a dumbphone.
I’ll accomplish this by:
- I can only use apps on my homescreen (limitations following)
- Relatively non-addictive apps (phone, messages, camera, calendar, Google maps, productivity apps)
- No games (deleting all games from my phone)
- Some apps I don’t want to delete and will keep, but not use by taking them off the homescreen. (Social media apps, etc.)
- I’m allowed to use Duolingo and Climate Action Now to keep up what I consider to be net positive uses of smartphone time. Also, I never use them for more than 10 minutes a day anyway.
- I’m allowed Spotify for playing music while I work (I always listen to classical, jazz, or movie/video game soundtracks while I work, depending on my mood, I’ve found that it really improves my focus).
- I will allow myself 5 minutes a day to use Instagram to post to my Verdant Growth social media because that contributes to my mission to show that living ECO is happier, more fulfilling, and healthier. Posting only, no scrolling.
- Lastly, I will allow myself 15 minutes a day of YouTube, just because I do enjoy watching YouTube and I think 15 minutes a day of something I enjoy is healthy.
- MOST IMPORTANTLY: NO NOTIFICATIONS! My phone is only allowed to notify me when I get calls, messages, or for alarms I set.
For the apps that I need to control with time, I will be using my phone’s Digital Wellbeing app to only allow myself those 15 minutes a day for YouTube and 5 minutes for Instagram.
I should note, that I may still allow myself some social media time via a computer…But I’m not allowed to doomscroll there either. I’m going to clamp down on that pretty hard. I tend to not use social media on a computer anyway, so I’m not too worried about this one. It’s purely for responding to messages, posting new content, etc.
How I Anticipate It Will Go
I think that I’m going to realize how much time there is in a day. I think I will find myself less distracted, more focused, and spending more quality time with my family. I think I will end up doing more things that I enjoy, rather than using a smartphone that just burns time.
Despite the positives, I don’t think I’m going to stay off of social media forever. I do think there is some benefit to using social media in my case because it allows me to interact with the community and continue to try to encourage change, but my recent use has been unacceptable and needs to be cut way down. Same goes for games. If those come back, I think I will need to put time limits on them.
So that’s it! It’s time to start. It’s time to take back my time from Google/Facebook/Twitter/etc. and hopefully learn that there are better things to do that make me happier than those apps ever could. Care to join me? If so, comment down below or reach out to me on Twi….Wait, nevermind.
If you’re interested in hearing a follow-up in a couple weeks, let me know! If there’s interest, I’ll post.
Thanks for reading, everyone!
