Day one trying to tackle phone addiction (I average 8+ hours a day. Sometimes it reaches 11. Worst apps are Instagram and Whatsapp)
Deleted Instagram app (not the account tho) and locked most of people who steals my time at Whatsapp.
Also I put the phone on grayscale thanks to a tip I read in the forum. And it looks really dull and more a WORKING TOOL than something to have fun with (isn´t it what phones should be??).
Yesterday Night instead of doomscrolling, seeing pictures of people I dont care or talking bullshit with drunk friends on group chat, I watched a basketball with my son. Today I read to him 3 books. Boy was elated to have my full attention!
Feeling good so far. I fucking hate phone addiction. It´s very evil:
It´s social acceptable and captured most of society. People will expect you to respond and interact asap as they do.
You spent much more time with your phone than drinking, smoking or using drugs;
It damages your brain and your concentration like alcohol and drugs;
It hurts you physically, specially kids: eyesight, hands, fingers, neck, back.
Last week my average was 8:45 hours / day on phone.
That´s 22 hours I set the timer on sober.
I spent SEVENTEEN MINUTES on the phone so far.
10 minutes on sober
4 minutes on banking app
3 minutes on whatsapp (checking if my mother or boss sent me something)
It helps you breathing better like when you quit smoking… anxious to break the chains of this sad modern form of technological slavery!
Im absolutely shocked HOW LONG is the day and how many stuff I can do.
I thought It was already 3 PM and I was going late then I checked the time (at my microwave, not phone ) was still 1 PM. Two hours I ´d have frittered away scrolling and talking nonsense online
I was walking with my dogs on lunch time, a moment that I ever kept phone free, but still it was different because even without the phone I´d be pissed off/worried with something I read the last time I checked it before getting the dog lashes. Damn, the obsession is almost insane.
I remember when I was a heavy smoker that the first thing I´d do when opened my eyes would get a cig. I just did the exactly thing with my phone for the last 2 or 3 years.
My first smartphone I was 30 years old, I went late for it on purpose. Still it captured my life insanely last decade.
You are not alone. This is a tidal wave of addiction that people are just beginning to understand. I have bought a “dumb phone” from Nokia and know a few people following suit.
For those who needs the Whatsapp to work another good idea is having dual chip and giving one number only for the selected indispensable few.
im on day 2 and I think my mood is already better. No angry/indignation or any other bad feeling triggered by social media or bullshit talk. Yesterday had to talk a bit with my sister and a cousin on whatsapp but the day TOTAL was like 1 hour. 10% of what I was using.
I just checked my “locked” whatsapp messages without opening it, could read a friend with much free time in his hands already asking “if something happened, (…) was still alive…”
How sad is the legions of people who grew up without technology and on his adult years were presented to a damn phone and became SLAVES of it. Now just figure what it does with teens and small children. Disturbing.
I actually know a little boy of a relative whos with the mother phone on hands since he was 2 or 3. Boy had a delay on his speech for years. Now he has myopia on his both eyes. This may or may not have been caused/worsened by the smartphone, but certainly didn´t make it better. And everywhere you see fathers giving this shit to kids on restaurants so they “behave”. Absolutely sad.
Since I need my brain to be fully fit to study and work, this now became one of the top reasons to cut this addiction forever:
One study found that people who used their smartphones for more than two hours a day had less grey matter in the hippocampus, a region of the brain that is important for memory and learning.
This is a good idea. I’ve been realizing how crazy my life started revolving around smartphone since I have one (since 4 years). I managed everything without before that. Now it seems like I couldn’t. Definitely have become addicted to the thing in general but also gained dependency and anxiety around whatsapp (‘why they don’t reply?’ ‘nobody thinks about me…’ Type of thinking…). All in all i was happier without i think. Or at least more tranquil.
Whatsapp seems “innocent” but consumes a LOT of time. Mainly if you have too much contacts and hadn´t changed your phone number for a while. Sometimes I think it´s more evil than Instagram or Facebook because it DEMANDS you an answer. You´ll be “rude” if you don´t reply that person right away! Also, for many people, is a work tool, as it is for me. So you need to be online so your boss or clients can call you and your friends ALSO needs to be online there to answer his boss, so…
The group chats are absolutely insane. Theres one from work, other from your uni mates, past colleagues, team supporters, family, wife family… in everyone there´s this guy with free time on his hands demanding attention
The good thing is Whatsapp allows you a lot of customization to turn off the notifications. I just learned how to turn off the video call notification. Also the tabs “archived” and mainly the “locked” ones (that you only unlock with your face AND clicking on it) are working fine.
Im feeling the urge to check the whatsapp but when I do it I DO NOT click on archived or locked messages. I have only a half dozen people on my “main” whatsapp screen which will only reach me if VERY important. So I check it for a few seconds and lock it again since nothing happened.
Had to talk with my mother about her medical issues today, and a really good friend called me and I said I´m on a detox and she understood quickly. I told her to, if it´s REALLY important to talk to me, send me an email (on my job mail) that I would answer on the same day. My amount of time today was 48 minutes. My initial goal (I was on an insane spree of 8 to 11 hours) was to keep it under 3 hours, then 2 hours, but I think less than 90 minutes daily is perfectly doable.
Im two days without Instagram and I´m pretty sure I lost ABSOLUTELY NOTHING important.
Yesterday I talked to 2 more good friends only to tell them that I´d be offline now.
.
Need to see some work stuff on whatsapp also.
The overall screen time was 74 min, below my goal of 90 min!
Today in the morning went to play football with my boy. Instead of picking my phone every 5 minutes to check messages or record videos of him so I could brag on instagram for people that I don´t care how athletic and good he is in sports, I just played ball with him.
Two older kids appeared and we played a game. Me and my son beaten them 5-4. It was the first time ever we played a match together. Not only phone fault tho, just because he´s so young. But with the phone I´d be just recording him playing with the kids instead of taking part of it and getting this splendid memory.
Just checked the phone once, to see if was already lunch time.
Things are doing fine!
My weekly average was 80 minutes (only because I used the phone to continue some research I was doing on PC before sleeping)
I still think about the phone sometimes (not like a strong abstinence feeling, but still it´s an habit).
But my brain seems much less fogged. And much less stressed without knowing what´s happening on the lives of hundreds of people I know.
I hope I continue like that for years to come.
When I quit smoking, it caused me to spend way less time on my phone because I always smoked while surfing the web on my phone.
I spent a lot of time on my phone, and breaking that habit was a bonus from quitting smoking. Now that I rarely check my social media. Facebook, instagram etc I find it boring very quickly. Same old people whine about the same old things, and the fake people all post the same old fake BS.
I also switched phone providers and it gave me a new number that I only give out to important people. which is really nice.
I spend very little time on my phone now. I love it!
just came home, went to eat an hamburger with wife and son.
around me there were 6 other tables. many families, old gentlemen, kids.
every single table had at least two phones on. except ours, that the three of us were coloring with pencils a mickey mouse drawing the waiter gave to my boy
I just imagined bringing somebody from 1996 to that distopic scene. saddening, but I think it won´t last forever, somehow
forgot to mention that a kid aged around 1 and a half year old entered the restaurant and my boy exclaimed excited “look! a baby!”. after less than 5 minutes he sat, with a pacifier in his mouth, holding a phone in his hands…
I have been calling iPhones ‘smartphones’ for years. They’re not ‘smartphones’ anymore, they’re just phones.
There are a lot of other situations where we use this language that I’ve witnessed and there must be more but the biggest example I can think of is ‘flat screen TV’.
Flat screen isn’t something worth mentioning anymore, that’s just how TV’s come but back I the 90s when we had a TV the size of a bus, someone telling you they had a flat screen was very impressive!
Isn’t it nice to watch a game without the phone distraction? 
Good for you! 
) was still 1 PM. Two hours I ´d have frittered away scrolling and talking nonsense online