How I Radically Reduced My Smartphone Use (A Practical Science-Backed Guide) [#19]

In a recent New Year's resolution survey, 45% of respondents indicated they want to spend less time on their phone in 2026. It is the top resolution among all the others.

Most people feel the downsides of having smartphones available all the time.

Whether it is the decreasing attention span, the arising difficulty of being there for the important things in life, such as relationships, or the bad mood that regular news or social media updates put you in.

We don’t need another study to tell us that digital media is addictive; we just need to sit on a bus or go to the park.

What many don’t know is that an army of designers is paid really well to keep us stuck to the phone. Among other techniques, they use something called “dark pattern design”: building user interfaces crafted to deceive or manipulate us into actions we might not choose otherwise.

These actions might be signing up for services, sharing data, making purchases, or spending more attention on an app than we normally would. They exploit psychological techniques to prioritise the designer’s or business’s interests over ours.

Social Media apps are the worst; they are programmed like slot machines with never-ending newsfeeds that keep us hooked.

This design, in the interest of maximum profit, keeps us in this state of ​continuous partial attention​. It leads to increased stress, decreased ability to focus and concentrate on the present moment, prohibiting reflection, contemplation, and thoughtful decision-making. The constant connectedness also affects relationships, lowers productivity levels, and leads to overstimulation and a lack of fulfilment.

In this game against Big Tech and their supercomputers that calculate which content we are most likely to watch next, we can not only rely on willpower alone to get off the screens and into the real world more.

We need to learn the psychology behind it and then design a system that implements it.

This is the topic of today's newsletter.

By the way, I am not against tech in general; I am against the technology that keeps us from living a meaningful and joyful life. Namely, the tech that mixes harms with benefits and acts against our own self-interest.

The Habit Loop

The tech tools, especially the ones that make money with our attention via selling it to advertisers, are programmed to make us use them habitually.

The concept of the​ habit loop from Charles Duhigg​ explains why:

If you apply it to an app like Instagram, for example, you understand it better:

1. CUE - Make it obvious: You get a notification on your phone with some update.
2. CRAVE - Make it attractive: They are creating interest by not showing all the information; you need to enter the app to find out.
3. RESPONSE - Make it easy: You just need to tap with your finger to find out.
4. REWARD - Make it satisfying: You get your information craving satisfied and maybe stay a bit (or longer in the newsfeed), releasing ​Dopamine​ a neurotransmitter that makes you feel good about that behaviour.

This is very roughly how habits are formed. The more often you go through the loop, the more the habit sticks.

You can, of course, use this loop the other way around to create good habits, too. But that's for another newsletter.

Now that we know how the science of habit formation works, we can design the interventions to stop it. There are 3 ways:

1 - Removing Cues

The habit cycle starts with a cue, so if we remove the cue, the cycle doesn’t start.

For that, you can start by going to your notification settings on your phone and disallow all notifications from all apps (except the ones that are urgent, like calls). Little effort, high reward. You still have access to all the apps, but you are not bombarded with notifications that want to lure you in.

Another simple intervention is to charge your phone outside the bedroom, e.g. in the kitchen. You might need to buy an old school alarm clock, but this way, your morning belongs to you. You can use this space to just be, think, cuddle, meditate or do a few push-ups to start the day. It is good practice to do something hard or self-care first, before you check your phone. During the day, when you do something in your house, keep leaving it in the kitchen.

Fewer cues = more attention for important things.

If you meet people or go for a walk, put your phone somewhere where it is hard to access, like at the bottom of a backpack, for example. It’s still there for an emergency, but it will not keep you from spending quality time with yourself or friends. This will help you cultivate more presence and improve your relationships.

2 - Lessening Rewards

Removing cues already helps a lot, but if you have high dopamine activities on your phone, you might still engage with them more than you want.

One simple action you can take is to set your device display to grayscale to make it less visually stimulating and addictive. Dark pattern design uses bright colours to catch your attention. If it’s all greyish, the colourful world outside the smartphone suddenly becomes more interesting.

To grayscale your phone, enable Colour Filters in Accessibility:
iPhone (Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size > Colour Filters > Grayscale);
Android (Settings > Accessibility > Visibility enhancements > Colour correction or Colour Filters

Your brain will thank you :-)

A bigger, more effective step is to delete the most addictive apps from your phone, e.g. apps with bottomless newsfeeds like the common social media or news apps. This way, you can still access the apps from a desktop PC, but not everywhere you go. You put the brake on the dopamine that's released when you use your phone, thereby making it less addictive.

Reading the news is also a high-dopamine activity, and worse, the news is usually upsetting and puts you in a bad mood, which counterintuitively then makes you want to spend more time on your phone to improve your mood. An antidote is to follow positive news sources. My favourite one is ​Squirrel News​. Every time I want to know what’s going on in the world, I go to the app, and afterwards I feel better.

Good news often doesn’t make the news, but we must see it so that our worldview is more complete and we realise we are not all doomed. ;-)

3 - Resetting & Cultivating Meaning

Science shows that your dopamine levels will go back to normal after detoxing for 2 weeks. Evaluate a 2-week offline vacation for this year. Doing this not only helps you and your mental health, but it might also inspire others to reduce their smartphone use when you tell them you won’t be on your phone for 2 weeks.

We often pick up our phone because we have nothing better to do and want to evade difficult feelings or boredom.

But if you set aspirational goals for the future that make you feel good about yourself, it will help you cultivate better habits and combat the instant gratification of engaging with your phone.

Want to feel better in your body? Do some squats or other simple bodyweight exercises when you feel the urge to pick up your phone.

Want to improve your mental health? Cultivate presence through mindful breathing when the urge to pick up your phone comes up.

Want to be a changemaker? Set 3 intentions for the day and finish one before picking up the phone in the morning.

The key to being able to spend less time on your phone lies in cultivating a life that you don’t want to escape from.

​Cultivate connection, collaboration and fun​ or ​look for moments of deep connection​ and bring them more into your life.

When the pull to be present with the real world becomes bigger than the magic pull of the device, you and the natural world win.

Conclusion

It’s simple but not easy. The smartest people in the world work on how to make us more addicted to our phones - it’s a very profitable business model. But you can take back your agency by removing cues, lessening rewards, resetting and cultivating meaning.

You have the power to change your environment and control your phone so it doesn’t control you.

I hope this helps. If you found this guide useful, feel free to forward it to someone who might need it.

Happy regenerating,

Jonas

P.S.: If you want to go deeper, ​check out this guide​ from the Centre for Humane Technology to take even more control of your tech.