LONDON (news agencies) — If you’ve got a smartphone, you probably spend too much time on it — checking Instagram, watching silly TikTok videos, messaging on WhatsApp or doomscrolling on X.
It can be hard to curb excessive use of smartphones and social media, which are addictive by design. Reducing your screen time is often more than just a matter of willpower, especially for younger people whose brains and impulse control are still developing.
If you’re a phone addict who wants to cut down on the hours a day spent looking at your device, here are some techniques you can try to free up more IRL time:
An easy first step is getting rid of any apps you’ve been wasting time on.
Over the past year, I’ve deleted Facebook, Instagram and Twitter from my phone because I wanted to use them less. Now and then I’ll have to go the app store and reinstall one because I need to do something like post a photo I took on my phone. (Sometimes I’ll transfer the photo to my laptop and then post it to the web from there, but usually, it’s too much hassle.)
The danger with this approach is that if you do reinstall the app, you won’t bother deleting it again.
Both iPhones and Android devices have onboard controls to help regulate screen time. They can also be used by parents to regulate children’s phone usage.
Apple’s Screen Time controls are found in the iPhone’s settings menu. Users can set overall Downtime, which shuts off all phone activity during a set period. If you want a phone-free evening, then you could set it to kick in from, say, 7 p.m. until 7 a.m.
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