Why | Preamble
Algorithmic feeds suck you in, so you spend more time on mostly meaningless scrolling. Feeds are designed to keep you on the platform as long as possible. Sometimes something good comes up giving u a dopamine hit like a goddamn pigeon pressing a button. But mostly I did not want to spend so much times being served content and being mindless about my time spent staring at a screen.
Explanation
This is kind of sorted chronologically by my experiences in the past, but more like from least invasive/effective to most. All the measures I describe are there to restrict access to things you don’t want to be using (as much) in an ascending order of restrictiveness.
I noticed problematic phone usage in my teenage years, but the journey was long until now where i’m mostly satisfied with it. If one of the earlier steps works for you, great! It usually did not for me and I needed more drastic measures. Of course it also depends on the app what level is enough to counter its excessive use. I think there lots of tips online and in books for the earlier few but not so many for the later ones.
Counter muscle memory
Rearrange apps on your home screen, move them into folders or move apps away from home screen on the phone. Works for like half a day when motivation is high to not use the apps. My monkey brain figures the new layout pretty quickly and can find an app in the app drawer without thinking in seconds. Not quite stopping me procrastinating.
Time limits
Time limits on apps sounds good, doesn’t work. Yeah I know I only wanted to use this app for 15 min a day and I also extended the duration three times, and yeah imma do it again. An occasional reminder to stop is good and better than nothing. But being two clicks away from continuing scrolling is not an obstacle. For monkey brain trained fingers thats less then a second and you can’t rearrange those buttons.
Delete Apps
It is harder to access an app if you need to install it every time you want to use it. This is pretty effective until you reinstall it and do not delete it after use or use the browser (mobile or desktop) to access things. For some deleting apps might be enough, but not for me. The browser experience is worse, but still addictive enough to spend more time than you intended. Opening the browser or phone search and typing the first two letters of your favorite online social media gambling simulator site and then pressing enter is only a bit slower than opening an app. Of course typing only the first two letters is enough because you visit the site ten times a day, so the search exactly knows what you (consciously don’t) want to enter. Deleting apps is more effective with apps where you can’t access the content through a browser.
Making it even more uncomfortable to use
Allow yourself to use social media only on uncomfortable devices, e.g. watching YouTube only on the docked Nintendo Switch. The TV YouTube has less intrusive recommendations and if you sit in front of the TV you probably intended to spend some time. This might not reduce consumption but does make it in a way more mindful.
Another example is using an e-book reader where the pics might not even load and aren’t colored (depending on the reader). If you haven’t Blocked access on your main devices this requires a lot of self control and probably won’t work for long. Because if you had self control you wouldn’t be at this point.
Another thing that might help is setting your phone screen to black and white. Personally this annoyed me too much with the things I wanted to spend time on. Or set it back when I NEEDED to look at a picture in color.
Disable main functionalities
I found this to be helpful with YouTube because I rarely wanted to completely Block it off for prolonged periods of time, as I feel like the ratio of usefulness to harmfulness is better with YouTube compared to other social media platforms. (YouTube is btw mostly a parasocial network in my opinion thus a bit different) For me the solution is disabling recommendations. One way is to disable recommendations for more videos when a video is playing. I used some browser extension some while ago but I lost it some time ago. I don’t remember if YouTube circumvented it or I moved browsers or something. But the main way I made YouTube the old YouTube is to disable the youtube start page by turning off watch history. And just like that, I only have my Subscriptions to browse. No start page → no algorithmic recommendations.
Another option is making rss feeds out of everything and not visiting the sites at all. Works only most of the time and only for public content, not followers only, private posts.
Block
Don’t allow your devices to serve you the content that you crave. You have the power to disable it and use it to take the power from yourself to lift those restrictions. This like gambling, where you can stop yourself from gambling by notifying an agency and gambling providers aren’t allowed to let you gamble(OASIS in Germany).
SelfControl is an app for MacOS. The name is a bit ironic, because you need it the most if you lack self control whatsoever. This is a way you can block domains for a chosen time and not being able to revert it in any way until the time is over.
On the phone you can enable parental controls and let someone you trust choose the password. In such a way you can also block reinstalling the apps.
This is pretty drastic and probably only needed for a limited time of digitalDetox. You have to use that time to build better habits.
Delete the accounts
Delete your accounts. You’ll probably be fine. I have done this for reddit only yet. I never had TikTok, but this would be the first I would probably delete. This is the only long term sustainable way for freedom from your screens. This only makes sense if the value proposition of that particular software is negative for you and the useful/harmful ratio is bad.
Know what you want to do with your time
THIS is the hardest, because you need to do more than opening your laptop or taking your phone out of the pocket. You either need to put your devices aside, go outside, touch some grass or do more engaging activities where it actually takes some effort. O hey I’m doing a blog now in case you didn’t know. For me it’s not like I don’t know what to do with my time in general. It is just an initial effort to start doing things that I enjoy. Most things are harder when you’re tired (physically and/or mentally) than taking out your phone and occupying two eyes and one thumb.