How I finally kicked my phone addiction
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I was struggling to focus on physical books, so I knew it was time to stop scrolling. I asked Catherine Price, the author of How to Break Up with Your Phone, for her best advice.
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I pick up the phone to check a notification, and 20 minutes later I’ve scrolled a mile into my Instagram feed, and I can’t remember a single thing.
Like most of us, I’ve struggled to put down my phone for as long as I’ve owned one. When my kids were little, I was careful about the example I set and worked to stay present. Over the last few years, though, my phone usage has tipped from a bad habit into something closer to a dependency.
I’m not an outlier. Pew Research Center found that 41% of U.S. adults say they’re online almost constantly. So I called Catherine Price, who wrote How to Break Up with Your Phone and, with Jonathan Haidt, the new kids’ book The Amazing Generation. I asked her the thing I’d otherwise be typing into a search bar on my phone at 11 p.m.: How in the world do I quit my phone habit? If you’re in the same boat, here’s her advice:
7 tips on how to break your phone addiction
1. Make it boring
Phone dependency is less about discipline and more about the device and its design. “The best comparison for a smartphone isn’t a flip phone, it’s a slot machine,” she says. The apps borrow straight from slot-machine design, packing themselves with what she calls dopamine triggers: bright colors, unpredictable rewards and the constant novelty that keeps you pulling the lever.
“You shouldn’t blame yourself for getting sucked in,” she says. “We’re up against forces that are much stronger than we are.”
One thing that helps, she says, is to drain the color. Flip the screen to grayscale so the icons stop glowing at you like a strip of casino carpet. Small, ugly, effective. Price eliminated the temptations entirely: Her home screen is black and empty except for an app blocker.
2. Name the replacement
Most people look for ways to quit before answering a harder question first: “What do you actually want to spend your time and attention on?” Price says.
Whether it’s more time with your kids, knitting, or a project you’ve been putting off, concrete goals will help you resist the siren’s song of infinite scrolling. If you claw back phone time without a plan for your new free time, you’ll be susceptible to falling back into the habit, Price says.
I wanted to read more physical books, take long walks, and organize a long-neglected corner of the attic. All of it felt far more productive than catching up on strangers’ vacations.
3. Take a hard look at where you’re spending time on your phone
Open Screen Time on an iPhone or Digital Wellbeing on Android and scroll past the big total, Price says. Not every minute on the phone is a loss.
“A common mistake is to lump all screen time into one category” and decide it’s all bad, she says. “If you used your phone for six hours on Google Maps, I don’t think you should feel bad about that.”
Checking a medical record, texting a friend, listening to a podcast–none of that is the problem. To spot the real time-stealing culprits, scroll down to check out your most-used apps and the apps you first use after picking up your phone. If it’s, ahem, Instagram, now you know what to work on.
Apps like Instagram aren’t just eating up hours in your day, they’re eroding our attention and memory, Price says. Personally, I’ve found myself struggling with both in ways that I can’t fully blame on perimenopause.
“There’s new research that short-form video in particular, TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, is especially bad for our attention spans,” she says.
4. Block the biggest time-wasters
“I know I have a problem looking at Instagram first thing when I wake up, so I block it for the first hour and a half of my day,” Price says. Blockers like Opal, Brick and ScreenZen are a good way to keep you off apps you don’t need, she told me.
Apps like ScreenZen introduce intentional waiting periods (e.g., forcing you to wait 15 seconds) or breathing exercises before an app opens, breaking your mindless autopilot, while Opal completely locks you out of designated apps during a scheduled focus session, preventing you from ending sessions early or deleting the app.
If you can live without the app entirely, go ahead and delete it. Price deleted the news and email apps she constantly found herself checking.
5. Turn off every notification that isn’t necessary
“I think of them as interruptions, not notifications, because they’re just interrupting what you’re doing,” Price says. Turn off everything that isn’t a person trying to reach you.
Price only allows notifications for texts, calls, maps and her calendar, and her phone case covers the top so she can’t see it light up when she gets a notification.
6. Get the phone out of the bedroom and buy a cheap alarm clock
“You have to touch the alarm clock to silence it, so if your phone is your alarm you’re guaranteeing it’s the first thing you touch in the morning,” Price says.
Price keeps her phone in her closet, so she has to get up in the dark to check it in the middle of the night.
What worked for me
At the start of the summer, I swapped the bedtime scroll for physical books, and read more over three months than in the previous few years combined. I’d fallen out of the habit and could feel my attention fraying, which is a bleak self-realization for sure.
Again, this isn’t just me. It’s a national trend. In 2021, Gallup found Americans read an average of 12.6 books a year, the fewest since it started asking in 1990 and down from 15.6 in 2016.
Now reaching for my phone in bed makes me squirrelly. I fall asleep faster, sleep deeper and, for whatever it’s worth, I’ve started dreaming more. I haven’t installed the app blockers yet, but Price reassures me it’s OK if I fall off the wagon from time to time.
“Perfection is not the point,” she says. “These devices have been designed to be nearly impossible to have a healthy relationship with. Give yourself grace.”
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