Stop. On your. Phone.
AKA how to break a social media addiction (without going analogue).
“Mum. Mum! MAAAAAA-UUUUUUUM!!!!!! STOP. ON YOUR. PHONE!”
I was jolted out of the digital reverie by my almost three-year-old’s clipped demand. Her little hand covered the screen before she grabbed my phone and threw it far, far away from me.
Fuck, it happened again. And I couldn’t even remember how.
“I am so, so sorry, sweetheart.”
She let me hug her for a moment, then quickly pushed me away as she explained the instructions of whatever game of hers I was about to be roped into. Something about being firefighters. Oh, what’s that? “You be the fire, Mum. MUM!” Okay, I was the fire.
I got off the couch and did my best impression of an out-of-control blaze, made even more convincing with my shouts of “I’m a fire! I’m a fire!” With her chest puffed out, she narrated her every move as she strode into her imaginary firetruck, clicked in her seatbelt, and then drove around the couch until she arrived back at the spot where my interpretative dance moves had become more erratic with each passing moment the fire went unchecked. It took some work – and a lot of loud shhhhhhhh-shhhhhing of water gushing from an imaginary hose – but she eventually reduced my movements to a tiny spark that lay crumpled on the floor.
Yeah, it was a lot more physical than mindlessly scrolling through my social media feed but infinitely more interesting.
It’s not that I’m trying to be like those holier-than-thou parenting influencers who insist on ditching phones to be present for their kids while documenting said life on social media. I’m happy to admit that I consciously pick up my phone to tune out when my almost-three-year-old watches Fireman Sam (but never Bluey, I love Bluey) or when she and my husband are playing together without the need of my interpretive dance input.
The frustrating thing is, I didn’t even mean to get sucked into a vapid social media vortex. I’ve noticed it happens when I pick up my phone to read a text, check the weather, or read an email, and then 10 minutes (or many more) later I find that I haven’t done the thing I originally set out to do.
It truly pisses me off that a device that’s so helpful and entertaining and great at taking photos also has apps designed to be super addictive. And it pisses me off further that instead of making tech companies more accountable for their role in all of this, it’s been left to us mere mortals to shake ourselves out of our zombie-like trance.
I’ve tried many things:
· Turning off my notifications
· Deleting the worst time-sucking apps (but working in the media means I need them for my job)
· Putting time limits on those apps (pointless, when you can easily ignore the limit)
· Turning off my data, and
· Keeping my phone in a different room when I don’t need it.
I haven’t yet tried replacing my phone with an old brick, like Gen Z is partial to, although I might not need to resort to old tech after coming across a piece of research that explains how to make life inside your phone a lot less colourful than the one outside of it.
Literally.
Researchers at the University of North Dakota in the US discovered that changing a phone’s screen to greyscale significantly decreased “problematic smartphone use” (that’s the official term, also: me) and anxiety (and me). They concluded: “It appears smartphone use in grayscale is less gratifying, which makes it easier for individuals to regulate their smartphone use”.
Above: my family in greyscale. Soooo uninteresting.
It couldn’t be that simple, could it?
Could it?
REALLY?
So I tried it. I followed these instructions I found online for the iPhone (sorry my Android friends):
· Go to Settings
· Accessibility
· Display and Text Size
· Colour Filters On
· Check Greyscale on
Then, to easily toggle between greyscale and full colour by triple-clicking the right button, you set it up like this:
· Go to Settings
· Accessibility
· Accessibility Shortcut
· Select Colour Filters
It’s only been 24 hours but I can confirm that my phone doesn’t have the same hold over my attention. After I finish reading a message, I swipe up, and without any colourful apps vying for my attention, I just put down my phone. Black-and-white Instagram is only interesting for 5 seconds. LinkedIn: 2 seconds. TikTok: I wouldn’t know because I never downloaded it (I knew if I did, I’d be lost to the algorithms forever).
When I consciously decide I want to see what’s going on in the digital world, I triple-right-click to turn the colour back on, and then triple-right-click when I’m done.
Life. Changed.
And now, when my almost threenager shouts at me, it’s not because I’m lost in a sea of elder millennial memes and vids (as hilarious as they are). It’s because I haven’t given her the glass of milk she only just said she didn’t want. Or because – god forbid – I turned off the bedroom light before she could. Or because she wants “privacy”… but with me… in the bathroom… when I would like to do a wee in peace.
Oh, the joys of parenting.
Before I go, I just wanted to say thank you so much for your support this year. I’ll be taking a short break, but I’ll be back with more musings in 2024.
Until our next 3am Huddle
Lizza x
Photo by Pavan Trikutam on Unsplash