The things I did to cut down on my phone time, and the things I plan to do next to cut it furtherrrrr
I've been able to cut down on using my smartphone, but I still want to cut it down further. Here are some of the things I did, along with how successful they were.
Stuff I've already done
Deleting my Social media accounts (successful)
Instagram was my only form of social media, aside from Whatsapp, but that doesn't count to me because you can't doom scroll on Whatsapp! Not until they make doom scrolling the main feature 😔. Anyway, I didn't find any value in Insta anymore for the following reasons:
- All I ended up doing on the site was doomscroll
- I had it to keep in touch with people whose phone numbers I didn't have, but they weren't messaging me and I wasn't messaging them, so there really was no point 🤷
So yeah, I first deleted the app, but found myself going on it on the browser, which was a worse experience but kept me hooked on that sweet, sweet soma (still haven't read Brave New World yet). So I deleted my account some time in late spring/early summer 2025, and I've been Insta free ever since 😁.
I also deleted my Discord and Reddit accounts, mostly because I didn't see the value in these platforms anymore. Discord was great during my undergrad years in Covid since it kept me connected to my friends, but but now I'd rather connect with them in person than online. They were public Discord channels that I joined but I was mostly lurking in them, not actually contributing to anything. I made a Reddit account in 2016 (I think) because I wanted to save posts in the bodyweight fitness subreddit (was majorly into calisthenics at the time, and was too broke for gym), but over the years I found myself compulsively scrolling the site, and I can't lie it was a gateway to spicier stuff 👀. Ironically, I was surfing on the Nosurf subreddit and came across a book called You Should Quit Reddit, which I read and realised I was wasting my time and potential, so I deleted my Reddit account. I don't go on Reddit chronically now, I only go on it if I search up a coding or Linux question on a search engine and it returns a URL to a Reddit post. There's also the whole thing of the walled garden and how these corpos can do whatever they like the images and info you share on their platforms.
Using more niche smartphones (unsuccessful)
I purchased a really tiny smartphone, the Unihertz Jelly Star 2 (or something along the lines of that), and an eink smartphone, the Bigme Hibreak Pro. They were very fun to use, and normal sized phones felt very weird to hold after using the Jelly Star 2, but I still found myself watching youtube and scrolling on my phone, even on a tiny screen and in monochrome!
Using a refurbished Pixel 8 (Successful)
I ending up going back to a proper smartphone, specifically a refurbished Pixel 8 off of Ebay, because it meant I could install GrapheneOS. This meant I could control what apps I could have on my phone, which led to me...
Deleting the YouTube app (Successful)
The YouTube app isn't on GrapheneOS by default anyway. You could install it from the Google Play Store, or (better) equivalent apps like Revanced and NewPipe, but I chose not to because I knew I would get sucked in by the infinite scrolling and recommendations. Instead, I watch YT videos on the browser, with the Distraction Free YT extension on Firefox, all while signed out (I unfortunately have to keep my Gmail accounts, because I've lost track of all the things I've registered for with these accounts 😔). I also use Outertune to listen to muzak. I should also mention that I don't actively subscriptions on YT anymore, because I have switched to Managing my subscriptions using RSS. I talked about it here in this post but yeah I love RSS, it's great :)
Things I plan to do next
Keep my phone out of my room! It's a very bad habit of mine because I end up going on it the moment I wake up. I may just keep it in a passageway or the kitchen, and force myself to use it there when at home unless I need to take a private call (ladies 😉).
Opt for analog options where possible, i.e. using pen and paper instead of the notes app, a camera (one of those cool instant ones!) instead of the camera app, printing out papers instead of reading them on the phone screen. On the last example, I find myself less engaged and understanding when reading text on my phone compared to on paper, and even compared to my laptop screen.
Find more fulfilling ways to fill my time! No point in twiddling my thumbs! I've been reading more, but I feel like I should create more now that I'm consuming less (woah deep). I want to learn electronics and bought a book on the subject so that I can eventually get to working on beginner projects, before going on to make batshit insane stuff mwahahaha. I also want to write more and practice my verbal communication. There are times when I find it very hard to convey what I mean, and I find myself stumbling over my words more and more often. Also socialising more, I want to meet new people and do cool things 😎. Maybe learn Mandarin and impress the Chinese people in my office haha.
I'd be interested to hear your (the 5 people who read this 😆) opinions, so send me an email at abdyedabrownguy@protonmail.com!