Are you addicted to your smartphone? According to Google, 95 per cent of Android users pick up their phone every six minutes and receive a notification every seven. Consumers are becoming wary, and the tech giants are finally responding.
Apple’s Screen Time feature (available in iOS 12) tells users how long they have been on their device each day. As for Android, there are similar third-party apps too, such as ActionDash, and the Digital Wellbeing feature on the latest Google Pixel phones. It allows users to monitor how much time they spend on individual apps, and to set limits.
Users can also turn on the "Flip to Shhh" feature on their Pixel that mutes all notifications when the phone is simply flipped over. And Wind Down aims to help people unplug by limiting notifications and turning the display to greyscale, making Instagram or Flipboard remarkably unappealing.
Some have taken the drastic step of trading their smartphones in for a dumber model. Technology executive Daniel Clough, for example, usually leaves his iPhone at home in favour of sleek, stupid Nokia 130 with no apps, no web browsing and no camera – only calls and text messages. Others are using phones designed for senior citizens, like the Doro PhoneEasy, a fliphone with oversized buttons and limited functionality.
On his blog, Clough admits that it is inconvenient not being able to Google any random question that pops into his head. “But how great I feel without a smartphone far outweighs that,” he says.
In 2015, more than 3000 Kickstarter users backed the Light Phone, a credit-card sized mobile device designed to be used as little as possible. It works as a phone in its own right, and can make and receive calls, but also pairs up with an app so that you can forward any calls you get to your usual number, but leave your smartphone at home.
Cal Newport, the author of Digital Minimalism, advocates an even more drastic approach to breaking distractions caused by smartphones. “The thing that ultimately seems to work for people is to wipe the slate clean and rebuild their digital life from scratch,” he says.
Newport suggests completely disconnecting from all personal technology – smartphones, game consoles, Netflix – for 30 days, and then slowly reintroducing only the things that we genuinely care about.
This is not, Newport is keen to point out, simply a ‘digital detox,’ where people step away from their devices for a little while but then return to all their old habits. “That makes no sense,” he says. “You would never say that to someone with a drug problem.”
Instead, the 30-day declutter that he advocates is about changing our relationship to technology. “One thing people realise when they cut off ubiquitous access to what I call ‘the stream’ of algorithmically generated palatable digital content, they very quickly start they lose their taste for it,” says Newport, who has never had a social media account. When you stop eating junk food, crisps become too salty, chocolate tastes too sweet.
Read more: ‘I’ve been grey for two weeks.’ Inside the movement trying to beat smartphone addiction
Over the last few months of 2018, Newport corresponded with more than 1,600 people who took part in his experiment. A lot of them “didn’t realise they had this background hum of anxiety”, he says. “When they stepped away from a lot of technology, this background anxiety really died down.”
Participants in Newport’s unofficial study were worried that without social media, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, their friendships would wither. They fretted about missing out on things. Newport’s response was simple. “You are missing out on things.”
The core of minimalism, he says, is about being ok with missing out on low value things to make more time for the high value stuff. “By focussing most of your attention on the high value you end up better off than trying to take that attention and spread it out,” he says. He offers an array of advice for re-learning how to live in an a more minimalist way: join clubs, embrace slow media such as newspapers and magazines, and schedule in time on Twitter or Netflix the way you would arrange a doctor’s appointment or a trip to the gym.
If doing without your phone for a month seems daunting, there are three smaller changes that Newport says can help nudge you in the right direction. You can delete attention-hungry apps “that someone will make money from you clicking on. You don’t have to quit these services, but restrict them to your laptop or computer,” says Newport. Another idea is to do ‘analogue leisure activities,’ such as reading books, cooking, picking up a skill, or joining a local sports team. “When people add this back in, they start to lose their taste for the junk food of social media,” he adds.
And finally, stop clicking ‘like.’ “Start using social media and texting to set up real world interaction, not to replace it. You should use them as a logistical tool to help you set up better, more real-world interaction,” says Newport.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
