To ask how to successfully cut down the amount of time I spend on my phone...

[PoppyBlunt]

I spend far too much time on my phone every day. Some of it is, of course, productive (emails, appointments, life admin etc), but lots of it isn't. I've tried deleting apps but end up reinstalling hours later.
Has anyone managed to go from hours a day to a reasonable amount?
How did you do it and make it habitual??

Oh and me and my DH have never had phones in our bedroom. Not a spoken rule, just something that had happened since we first lived together. Really helps to not scroll through the evening/night!

BlockSite app helped me, allows you to block certain apps and websites. It’s an addiction, you’re addicted to the little dopamine fixes you get from social media. You need to go cold turkey once you get past a few days to a week then you’ll be fine.

Just came back when I saw this on Facebook!

Following

I have spent nearly two
hours in a scroll hole with those reels and I can't even tell you now what they were of.

Yes!! I saw a motivational speaker say put your phone on do not disturb or vibrate for 30 mins and you will be shocked how much you get done.

I frequently do a digital detox and I deleted instagram, I found it lowered my mood because everything is so staged to be perfect or there’s always a zlister trying to flog something they’ve received for free.

I'm another one who has had How to Break Up With Your Phone unread for ages!

My screen time has got out of control on maternity leave. I'm very aware I use it far too much around my baby, which isn't how I want to parent, but having a non-communicative baby for your sole companion for much of the day can sometimes be quite boring and I resort to scrolling for distraction. Including during nighttime feeds to have something to look at to keep me awake. I'm going to have to make sure I always have a book loaded on my kindle instead I think.

Leave your mobile in your car/shed/bathroom/garage or somewhere. I find that a lot of younger people (I'm old, 63) spend too much time on their mobiles, which makes them boring, antisocial, and unintelligent. In my humble opinion!

Buy this.

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I’ve already got that. It does help. But I still overuse my phone.

So nice to read I'm not alone in wanting it address my phone usage!

Some great advice too.
I've thought about phone jails, but then the worrying part of me always thinks what if I need to make an urgent call or take an urgent call from school, nursery etc.

I think I'll download some of the apps that were recommended.

Someone I know made their phone a specific place to live in the house - centralish shelf for example - and made sure the volume was nice and loud. Turning it into more of a house phone, than a mobile.

This assumes that anything urgent that hadn't had a message responded to quickly, would be called through. Or just phoned through in the first place.

Then I suppose you can allocate when to look at messages, email and social media, rather than doing it constantly. But you have the peace of mind that you'd hear the phone and respond if it rang, much like the old days when it was just for calls.

I keep meaning to try it. My screen time is horrendous and I waste so much time looking at utter crap, yet I still feel stuck in bad habits.

Delete apps, turn off notifications, put in a drawer. If you really need help, there's probably apps that can help you (limit time), and I think you can also get a lock box

Watching with knterest as i am addicted to my phone. Someone recommended a book called digital minimalism' by Cal someone (cant rememebr his sirname) which is meant to be good.

I have a Google Pixel phone and there's a way to set daily timers for apps, you can set different timers for different apps so it's not a one size fits all system - once the timer has run out then you can't reopen the app until after midnight. I think a lot of people fall down on trying to be all or nothing - so they try not to touch their phone at all but then pick it up for something and then decide to "just quickly check" what they've missed when they put their phone down and end up spending even longer online.

They also have a widget that lets you see how much time you've spent on your phone in a day and how long you spent on each app. I set this up on my phone and let it run for a week so I could collect the data of how much time I spent on apps through the course of the day. It was eye opening to see in black and white just how long I'd spent on FB or WhatsApp etc in a day. I then started by putting the timer on the most used apps and reducing the time allowed in the app by 15mins every few days till it got to a manageable amount of time a day - eg if I spent 3hrs on Facebook then the first timer was set for 3hrs, then 2.75 hrs then 2.5hrs etc.

Now I have it set up so my social media for example - Facebook/Instagram/Twitter etc - is each limited to 1hr per day; that way I can access them any time I like but there is a limit to how long I spend on each app every day. I found that, after a few days of getting locked out by about 9am after mindlessly scrolling for the sake of it, I still scroll social media but much more mindfully - so I'll spend 5mins checking any updates first thing in the morning but then come out of the app to "save my time" for later in the day. Occasionally I will go through the rigamarole of removing a timer if I need to (eg if I'm using FB messenger to message a work colleague about something important and my timer expires) but otherwise they're just ticking along in the background.

I'm addicted to my phone. Inspired my thread, I just deleted my work email app and also turned off the Teams notifications. I have deleted Twitter before... but I just went back to it.

I don't and never have followed any I fluencers or celebs on SM so all my suggested feed is reels of things I'm interested in e.g. my sport, yoga and pilates, recipes, pottery, crochet, knitting. I can spend an hour on Instagram and feel better for it because I'll have seen something I want to (and will) try or something that I'll reflect upon later. I've seen friends' suggested posts and they are loads of "picture perfect" lives being thrusted at them so social media usage doesn't always get you down and make you feel bad about your life but often it can.

One of my friends sets a day to text everyone she loves. She finds that way she makes time to text something meaningful to maintain relationships but isn't on her phone constantly.

Some things i do do to balance my life is not to look at my phone on my commute - I either take a book or people watch/think of nothing and everything. On weekends I leave it in another room and forget it's there. I never take it with me while walking the dog or to the supermarket. My brother's children are all older than mine and he and my SIL never used their phones around the children while they were small so I have also followed that as a good example.

It is really freeing the way your head clears when you aren't tied to it and get over the initial feeling of missing a body part.

Here for the tips too

I've read it. It was good but I'm still addicted!

My phone has a digital wellbeing setting where you can set timers for apps and set a focus mode to turn certain apps off. Using it has really shown me how often I mindlessly try to open Instagram or whatever! I have an almost 6mo baby and spent hours on my phone during feeds in the newborn days but I'm now consciously trying to cut right down as I don't want to be on my phone around her

I leave my phone on a different floor in the evening. So from about 6.30 I rarely look at it. Means I've got back into reading this year.

DH and I considering a digital detox in the new year. His addiction is Twitter. Mine is instagram!

Put the radio or a podcast on whilst you are doing chores. You get the outside interaction coming in and your brain is stimulated. Should help prevent you picking it up from boredom

I flinch each time my usage report comes through. I tend to average 4-5 hours a day which is such a waste. I don’t do any work from my phone and very little uni work so really just wasting my time scrolling. Im off work today and my phone has pretty much been in my hand since I got up 🤷🏻‍♀️
I have decided upon reading this thread that I am going to make a real effort.
my ideas are to organize the apps onto pages based on the usefulness and put things such as social media on the back page and only go on that when on my break at work or for a set time once a day. I am going to order a kindle today, I do sometimes read on my phone in the evening but having WhatsApp, Facebook and Mumsnet available is a distraction. I am going to try turning up the volume and leaving in a central location when home so I can hear it if it rings but can ignore the million WhatsApp messages until a time I decide. I might give myself 15 minutes morning, afternoon and evening to catch up on messages (I get an awful lot from the uni WhatsApp groups I’m in)
realistically my daily usage should be around 1 hours rather than multiple each day

Greyscale the phone. Makes it so much less attractive to pick up and open apps when it is on.