One addiction to watch out for is the desire to read articles about other people's attempts to conquer their phone addiction. They seemed to start about 2-3 years ago - surely we have passed the peak by now?
In my experience you get a degree of dopamine from the inevitable schadenfreude felt reading of the author's difficulty or perceived "failure", but there is a steep law of diminishing returns when it comes to learning anything new, until eventually you realise this and that, even if you are not addicted to your phone, you are almost certainly addicted to something else yourself (e.g. Wordle, some podcast you could almost certainly live without, websites you would be ashamed to admit to using, damaging personal relationships, the spotting or collecting of pretty much any real or virtual object and so on.)
The secret is to (a) tell yourself not to click on the stories in the first place and reward yourself for doing so (b) look but quickly scan them. Also, actually check who wrote the article, so you can decide whether or not you know or care who they are.
My own phone tips are:
- deleting apps (especially anything social but also YouTube and anything that feeds you random content - the advice from another commenter about considering the business model of the app is good)
- inserting gaps between apps on your home screen so it's not cluttered (iPhone users: do a search for "Invisible iOS Home Screen icon Template" - it's ridiculous Apple don't let you add blank spaces, but we are (still) where we are)
- turning all the badges/counters off
- massively pruning notifications
- having a mobile browser home screen filled with icons for 'meaningful/useful' favourite sites
- using text only news sites (less distracting)
- placing the phone face down or across the room
- keeping it in silent mode the entire time
- putting it in airplane mode at night
- books/audiobooks (because more effort's gone into them but also they're longer, so there are far less frequent occasions when you have to decide/browse what to listen to next)
- personally I'd also recommend turning screen time etc OFF - on iOS at least you can get a decent enough idea of usage just from looking at the battery page and time limits inevitably never work.
I'm aware if I was truly free of any addictive behaviour myself I'd have skipped writing a comment about it, but I don't comment on this issue that often and the above have genuinely worked for me for quite a long time.
In my experience you get a degree of dopamine from the inevitable schadenfreude felt reading of the author's difficulty or perceived "failure", but there is a steep law of diminishing returns when it comes to learning anything new, until eventually you realise this and that, even if you are not addicted to your phone, you are almost certainly addicted to something else yourself (e.g. Wordle, some podcast you could almost certainly live without, websites you would be ashamed to admit to using, damaging personal relationships, the spotting or collecting of pretty much any real or virtual object and so on.)
The secret is to (a) tell yourself not to click on the stories in the first place and reward yourself for doing so (b) look but quickly scan them. Also, actually check who wrote the article, so you can decide whether or not you know or care who they are.
My own phone tips are:
- deleting apps (especially anything social but also YouTube and anything that feeds you random content - the advice from another commenter about considering the business model of the app is good) - inserting gaps between apps on your home screen so it's not cluttered (iPhone users: do a search for "Invisible iOS Home Screen icon Template" - it's ridiculous Apple don't let you add blank spaces, but we are (still) where we are) - turning all the badges/counters off - massively pruning notifications - having a mobile browser home screen filled with icons for 'meaningful/useful' favourite sites - using text only news sites (less distracting) - placing the phone face down or across the room - keeping it in silent mode the entire time - putting it in airplane mode at night - books/audiobooks (because more effort's gone into them but also they're longer, so there are far less frequent occasions when you have to decide/browse what to listen to next) - personally I'd also recommend turning screen time etc OFF - on iOS at least you can get a decent enough idea of usage just from looking at the battery page and time limits inevitably never work.
I'm aware if I was truly free of any addictive behaviour myself I'd have skipped writing a comment about it, but I don't comment on this issue that often and the above have genuinely worked for me for quite a long time.