London (AP) -If you have a smartphone, you will probably spend too much time. Check the Instagram, or look at the foolish tiktok video, see the Doomscrolling in the message or x for whatsapp.
Excessive use of smartphones and social media can be difficult to prevent addictive. Reducing screen time is more than just a matter of will for your will, especially for young people who are still developing brains and impulse control.
If you are a telephone addict who wants to reduce your time in your device, there are some techniques that you can try to freely take more IRL time.
Delete app
The easy first step is to remove the app that is wasting time.
Over the past year, I’ve deleted it because I wanted to use Facebook, Instagram and Twitter from my phone. Now you need to go to the App Store and post a picture taken on your phone. (Sometimes I send a picture to a laptop and post it on the web, but it’s usually too cumulative.)
The danger of this approach is that if you reinstall the app, you won’t delete it again.
Use the built -in control
Both iPhone and Android devices have controls to help you control the screen time. It can also be used by parents to regulate children’s phone use.
Apple’s screen time control is in the iPhone’s settings menu. The user can set the entire down time, so all telephone activities will be stopped for a fixed period. If you want a dinner without a phone call, you can start at 7:00 pm.
Control allows users to limit blankets to apps of certain categories such as social, games or entertainment, and limit the time to consume, and zero in a specific app. Are you too distracted to Instagram? Then set it to use only for a total of 20 minutes daily.
The downside is that the limits are not difficult to go around. It’s more stupid than the red line you can’t cross. If you try to open an app with a limit, you will see a screen menu that provides a notification or completely ignored after 15 minutes.
Android users can use digital well -being settings, including widgets. Screen time They had. There is an option to create a separate work and personal profile, so you can hide social media apps and notifications when you are in the office.
Do not distract
There is another small trick that makes the cell phone less distracted. Use iPhone’s focus mode to silence the notification. For example, if I am in a meeting somewhere, I will mute until I leave it. Android also has a focus mode to pause the distracted app.
Change your phone display from color to gray scale to not interesting. In iPhone, adjust the color filter in the settings. In the case of Android BedtimeOr adjust the color correction settings.
Android phones do not have to look at the mobile phone while the user walks. Above the head Digital well -being function.
Block the app
If there is not enough built -in control, it is designed to reduce screen time for many third -party apps such as JOMO, OPAL, FOREST, ROOTS and LOCKMEOUT.
Many of the apps have more free and premium versions with more features, and strongly forced them to subscribe to subscriptions by minimizing the “skipping” options on the payment screen. I tested some on the iPhone for this story.
To test OPAL, I was able to reinstall and block Facebook. Every time I knocked on the Facebook icon, OPAL focused on how many times I tried to open it to provide a variety of inspiration messages such as “Gain Wisdom, Lost Facebook”. In order to walk around the block, I had to open the opal and wait for 6 seconds. There is an option that can increase the difficulty by increasing the delay before seeing again.
JOMO, which was used to limit the Reddit app on the phone, worked in a similar way. If you press the unlock button, you have to wait for the button to move to the grandmother app.
The OneEEC app reminds users to pause for a while and take another approach. Installation that set automation to the shortcut of the iPhone can be confusing. Eventually, when installed for the Bluesky app, I reminded me of a prompt to run a shortcut to erasing the screen in purple blue and taking a deep breath to choose to open the app. But in reality it was too easy to skip the prompt.
The LOCKMEOUT dedicated to Android can be frozen in an app specified, depending on the time you have opened or used a few times as a location.
The obvious way to defeat these apps is to simply delete the app. Some users recommend that you follow the appropriate removal procedures. Otherwise, the app may be blocked.
Use external hardware
Digital blockers are not for everyone. Some startups that think people can prefer real barriers, offer hardware solutions that introduce physical friction between you and apps.
Unpluq is a yellow tag that requires a mobile phone to access the blocked app. Brick and Blok is two products that work along the same line. It is a square plastic piece that needs to tap or scan with a mobile phone to unlock the app.
The manufacturer of the device says that the software solution is so easy to bypass it, but the physical objects that can leave somewhere somewhere are more effective in eliminating distracting.
How about hiding the phone completely? There are various telephone locks and cases, and some are designed to lock the teenagers when their parents are sleeping. Yondr, which makes concerts and a portable phone lock pouch used at school, also sells home phone boxes.
See the therapist
Perhaps there’s a deeper reason for the compulsion of a smartphone. Perhaps it is a symptom of a fundamental problem with low anxiety, stress, loneliness, depression or self -esteem. If you think that’s true, it may be worth searching for more widely used treatment.
One of the London Hospital deals with “technical addiction” as a plan to explore the relationship with the technology with the “discomfort of face -to -face” with others.
Another clinic includes social media addiction treatment: “The tasks of patients’ technical technologies, such as setting boundaries for the use of devices, finding alternative activities that reduce online interactions, and learning more physical and more participation methods.
Mobile phone downgrade
Wouldn’t you trade smartphones for more basic smartphones? It is an extreme option, but there is a thriving subculture of a hand phone with only basic functions, and it provides food for those who are worried about the screen time by people, including retro lovers and parents. They range from cheap or flipphones of faint brands such as Nokia to sophisticated but more expensive devices for boutique manufacturers such as punks.
Of course, the trade off is that the Google map or an essential app like a bank.
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