27 August 2025
Back in April I posted about reducing my phone addiction and trying to find ways to reset my brain and waste less time on my phone. This post is written four months down the line, and goes through what worked, what didn’t and reflections.
What has stuck
Within a couple of months, the only app I downloaded back was Facebook. (More on this later). All in all, I managed to remove all short form social media content from my phone and keep to using it for active tasks like message replying, looking up locations on Google Maps and more. My notifications are non existent, and the slim socials bot has really helped with streamlining my notifications and giving me peace. I also no longer shop on my phone! I would call this project a success overall (with some of the adaptations I mention later) and I am really pleased with how far I have come from who I was to who I am now.
What has been dropped
In the end I found the Clicks keyboard too cumbersome for day to day use, and also found it really drained my battery. It did make it harder to message, but I found the physical barrier more frustrating than being an actual deterrent and I want to use my phone stress free. The keys were just too small and doesn’t have the same feel as an old qwerty phone. I remain to this day hopeful that a mainstream 5G qwerty phone will one day materialise.
I also really struggled to keep the phone in black and white, there are more calls for colour than I originally realised. But overall I do still switch back to this occasionally and it does help with making the phone feel less fun.
In terms of wellness and streak apps, I got rid of both Ahead and Duolingo. Trying to keep the streaks up was stressing me out more than the benefit I was getting and so I have happily ditched these apps. I’m currently working on my own gratitude journal that I want to incorporate into my daily habits when I have completed it, but less streak driven also.
What has been added
I realised I wanted something between a computer and a phone for long form content. I quickly found that I replaced doom scrolling with YouTube which felt like a bit of a regression to the old days (a kind of positive!) but I didn’t find always productive and useful. So I got an iPad! It is on the iPad I can express my creativity with the design and loaded up all my long form content to and deleted all long form apps from my phone. This has worked exceptionally well, creating a physical barrier to the more entertaining apps. Often I open up the iPad to “do something” and then just stop because I think hmm actually there’s nothing I want to actually do. I also downloaded Sudoku and use a tablet pen to write in the numbers which I love and works out my brain a bit more.
Man am I really gutted about this one. The slim socials work well for giving me email notifications on Facebook. But because I use Facebook for keeping up with Musical Theatre groups I found it very difficult to not have the app. For one, Facebook is slow in delivering the email notifications, so I found I was sometimes getting notifications really late. Then, if I had to reply quickly, the Facebook browser app was so clunky to navigate, often making my comments disappear or not work and this was tricky when trying to work at pace. The difficulty is that I will do my task and then automatically go on the news feed to scroll - it is horrible and I struggle to stop myself! The app is truly addictive.
There is no way for me to turn the news feed off in the native app. I tried looking for an alternative app for Facebook, and the closest I got was Friendly but this was imperfect for use. Considering how widespread Facebook is used, it truly has a lot of difficulties and issues with it making it impossible to try and maintain a healthy balance of app use.
Overall, this has been the most difficult and disappointing part of the process and I am still trying to think of ways to improve this.
Conclusion
Although there are some seemingly unfixable parts, I have really taken great strides in reducing my phone addiction. I read a lot more than I used to, and find myself more comfortable with my thoughts and being bored. I do wish to take things further in the future - perhaps if the ideal phone does get created for me - but for now I am reasonably content (besides blooming Facebook!).
For anyone considering trying to reduce their phone use even a little bit - I would recommend giving it a go, no matter how small the step. I am very glad I did.