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??

I find not recharging as often helps to cut own on screen time. I also, leave the phone inside a hat box in my wardrobe and get on with things at home.

Over Christmas I was completing a jigsaw puzzle for the first time in years while listening to an audiobook. Strangely I didn't feel the compulsion to check my phone for several hours, and felt so much better as a result. So it seems that I need to find absorbing activities to keep me away from the phone.

It depends what you use it for. If it’s social media then deleting the accounts and apps helps. If it’s browsing the internet then making that more difficult but disabling the default browser helps.

I mute all WhatsApp groups so that they don't ping up and I can read them all in one go after a while.

Apps like Instagram, Facebook I also turn off notifications and the red dot thing so that I don't know whether I have notifications in those apps without opening them.

Coincidentally, I signed up for a productivity challenge that began today and the first session was about barriers and distractions - so phone, basically.

So I have: used Screen time in settings to identify my most time sucking apps. I have already deleted instagram and Facebook so it was ..... Mumsnet

So this app is now in a folder with a forbidden symbol as its name.

Turned off notifications for pretty much everything apart from essentials.

Third suggestion was to unfollow on SM, but as I have deleted SM I think I can leave that.

I'm going to implement time limits using the screen time thing (like I have to with my 12 yr old)
I don't know if I can stick to it but worth a try.

On my clear minds app there's a hypnotherapy for controlling mobile phone compulsion. The other ones on there are good so will give it a go.

Oh, it's easy! I only have a dinophone, lol, so I have to sit at my pc to do anything else!

Put the phone at night in another room..

What on earth do you spend all this time doing on your phone? Is it gaming?

I think that I spend less than half an hour a day in my phone. I spend about 10 mins morning and evening going through messages but use very little else

Sometimes I will use internet banking and Google maps but that's pretty much it.

Reading Twitter, news websites, mumsnet, playing various puzzles.

Resurrecting your old thread @PoppyBlunt to ask if anyone on here made any progress?

I read through all this at the time and 7 months on I’m no better than I was.

Today has been the last straw, scrolling while my toddlers were talking to me - shameful. Others have referenced reading instead, I still wouldn’t have time for that!

Haha I've made no progress. My phone is my default for any and every bit of downtime.

Not really. I'm using it a bit less, but still far too much. I'm going to really try much harder once the children break up. Feels like a good time to challenge myself.

This is a good one! I recently got into tiktok and although it's rubbish can't stop scrolling. I just sit there doin it for the nite!

I have just now deleted it. I hardly go on anything else now.

I have a side hustle which I should be concentrating on! And also doin stuff for myself.

So here goes. No more bloody scrolling !!

You have to find something else to do and I suppose like an ex smoker find something for your hands to do. I’ve started knitting. My screen time has dropped. I find I can be in the room with everyone else, be involved with things like conversation but not as absorbed as reading a book. I should point out I’m a beginner level knitter.

This is why it’s getting to me too. I find myself telling him just to wait a second while I finish what I’m doing on my phone and I can see him losing interest in whatever it was he wanted to do 😩 it’s such an addiction though, it’s ridiculous

Love this @TakeMe2Insanity (and now I also have that tune in my head🤣) My friend set it as a New Year’s resolution- so she started writing stories in the time she usually spent pointlessly scrolling in evenings and has recently been paid for one of her short stories!

Also challenge yourself to not take phone out of bag as soon as you sit down in cafe, restaurant or whatever. It’s very weird at first, you feel like you’re just staring at randoms, but 99% of them will be staring down at their phone so don’t notice you. It’s worth having a magazine or book with you if you’re alone or waiting for someone. I never take phone out in places if DC are with me. Not wanting my parenting halo polished for that, but more that I work with young people and I know how crucial it is to fully listen and engage, which I can’t do if I have my phone out as they want to watch things on your phone too .

I used to always read in bed and now I just can't. My phone seems to be more interesting but it really isn't. It's just crap.
Could I tell you of anything worthwhile I scrolled through yesterday? Er no.