How a Phone Cured My Phone Addiction

I’ve been fighting a phone addiction for the better part of six years at this point, and only now can I proudly say that I managed to rewire my brain in such a way that I no longer reach for my phone at every free moment. All I had to do was get a new phone! Of course, it’s not just a regular smartphone, but an E Ink dumbphone. After getting it, my screen time dropped significantly, and I now spend more time present in real life than I have since the start of COVID.

Of course, getting a “dumber” phone is not the only factor that allowed me to overcome my constant scrolling and screen staring. A set of philosophies and slight adjustments to my old phone also allowed for the successful adoption of this new phoneless lifestyle. In this article, I would like to tell you a bit about how I set up my new phone, as well as outline all the steps I took over the years to achieve this longtime goal of mine.

The Goal

My goal was never to get rid of the smartphone in my pocket. My goal was for it not to distract me from life and the world around me. I still want to be connected and stay available for calls or messages, but not get distracted by notifications or a constant urge to scroll. Another key factor is the ability to “waste time” when there is nothing to do, while preventing the phone from sucking me in and making me spend more time on it than needed.

At first, I truly believed that I could just limit access to apps on my smartphone, but that proved to only slightly decrease my screen time while still keeping me quite addicted. While those tactics were not effective enough, I do believe that without applying them first, getting the new phone would never have been as effective as it was. So before I talk about the dumbphone, I would like to go over the steps I believe every person should take on their mobile device to decrease their screen time.

The fewer bright colors, the better

Switching to a black and white, text only launcher was surprisingly one of the nicest changes I’ve made. You see, modern phones have screens filled with colorful app icons that are designed to attract you. This leads to a constant subconscious craving to open your phone and do absolutely anything on it, even if it’s just staring at the main screen or scrolling through your apps without a purpose. Setting a colorless, icon free, text only launcher on your phone can greatly decrease this irrational phone use, since your brain no longer gets dopamine from just staring at the main screen. Personally, I use YAM Launcher, a fully open source launcher you can download from F-Droid. I chose it because of its extremely snappy app search and because it has only the absolute essentials without putting limits on you, unlike some other similar minimal launchers, such as Slim Launcher.

I do have to say that this change will not fully prevent you from randomly opening your phone. At least for me, it didn’t. However, it did decrease the number of times I do it in a day, as well as the total time I spend on the phone when it happens. If you are on an iPhone, I recommend removing the background and putting a black and white theme on all of your icons. While I can’t guarantee this will help as much, I do believe the improvement will still be noticeable.

Remove all social media apps

I’m not talking about removing social media from your phone, but rather their mobile clients. It’s okay to access Instagram or Facebook through the mobile browser, but God forbid you use the app, and suddenly you spend two to three times more time scrolling. Personally, I found that this simple trick can greatly reduce your phone time without forcing you to quit cold turkey. Mobile clients for social media are specifically designed to be as addictive as possible, since their goal is to keep you glued to the screen and feeding their algorithm. Interestingly, it’s completely different with the browser versions of the same services, especially on mobile. Many apps hinder their website performance to encourage people to use the mobile client instead of the browser version by purposely removing features and slowing the website to a crawl. This is supposed to encourage the user to download the mobile app for a better experience, but this slow social media is exactly what we need! The fact that the website is slower and barely works gives you enough time to snap out of it and close it when you realize that you are opening it out of habit and not necessity. This makes you waste less time scrolling without making you feel isolated from your social media contacts.

A very nice way to cure yourself of pointless scrolling is to make it useful and productive. I described a system like this in my [[replaceSocailMediaWithRss]] article. In fact, my new dumbphone still has the RSS setup, and it is one of the ways it lets me waste time when it’s really needed.

The New Phone

Finally, it’s time to talk about my new dumbphone, the Mudita Kompakt. Made by a small company specializing in mindful and minimalist devices, it is a true middle ground between smartphones and dumbphones. While it runs full Android under the hood, its format and E Ink display prevent most distracting activities because the screen is monochrome and has a refresh rate low enough to make any video playback simply intolerable. E Ink also doesn’t require a backlight to be visible, meaning that the phone doesn’t emit any blue light by default. There is, however, an option to turn on the backlight in case you are in a dark room. All of this makes this dumbphone perfect for reading and horrible for social media, therefore completely preventing the craving. Texting is also quite nice on it, so it is a perfect device for staying focused without distractions from anything unnecessary, while still allowing you to stay connected. Since the screen refreshes only when it has to change and has no constant backlight, I can easily get two days of battery life out of it. This is also considering that I have Syncthing sync my notes to it every hour.

But why THIS phone? In reality, the main reason I chose it, besides its screen, is the fact that it is degoogled. I’ve been using open source smartphones as my daily drivers for many years at this point and would never consider a phone with Google on it. While there were a few other options, Mudita Kompakt felt like the option that respected its users the most. I also loved the fact that it has no app store but allows for sideloading, meaning that I’m not limited to only having the default apps on it, as I can load anything I want through ADB. Even though sideloading is straightforward, it makes installing apps a much more deliberate action, therefore preventing junk from being installed.

While the goal of this phone is to not waste my time, sometimes some time has to be wasted. As mentioned before, I have my RSS feed set up on it, as well as KOReader, allowing me to read both articles and books, depending on my mood.

Final Thoughts

What is truly fascinating is that I love using my new dumbphone, but I still choose to spend more time away from it and phones in general. This is an insane improvement over the 15 hours of daily screen time I was getting five years ago. Thanks to it, I feel both mentally and physically better, as I’m now much more intentional with my work and study.