Addicted to my cellphone
Friday, August 22nd, 2025
I have a real problem. I'm completely addicted to notifications. I check my phone every two minutes to see if I've received a new message. I need to force myself to put my phone away so I don't jump on it as soon as it vibrates. And I'm honestly starting to get tired of it. It pisses me off to lose several hours of my (very limited) evening doomscrolling on three apps at once. Every time I spend a little too much time on Instagram reading arguments I couldn't care less about, my blood starts to boil and I throw my phone far away on my bed, telling myself I should really stop this time. And yet I persist. It's hard to admit this because it sounds completely ridiculous, but I am indeed addicted to my cellphone.
It's hard not to be connected in 2025. I feel bad if I don't text anyone for a full 24 hours. I feel like I'm missing crucial information if I don't check at least one social media platform during my day. I shouldn't feel this way, but the GAFAM have done one hell of a job because it's ingrained in my brain that spending time offline is a good way to isolate myself from everyone. And I've had ENOUGH! So for the past few months, I've been taking small steps to eventually free myself from this drug that is my little magic box. Here they all are, with a little justification on the effectiveness of each method.
Phone case with a magnetic clasp: 3/10
Probably the first conscious decision I've made to reduce my screen time: the daddy case. You know, the one with a little flap where you can put your cards, flap that you have to hold with both hands to take pictures, which makes mirror selfies 1000 times uglier. Real talk, it worked well at first! For the first two months, it made me pause for a moment when I was about to open my phone or even just tap the screen to see if someone had written to me. The extra effort of opening the case was enough to stop me and make me move on. Unfortunately, it's now become a mechanism that I do without even thinking about it, so its usefulness is really diminished and the disadvantages of the case still remain.
iPod: 7/10
I have several problems with Spotify, but in the context of my addiction, my biggest problem is that often, I want to change songs on the subway, but I get lost on my phone and end up on Reddit even if I have no real desire to. Plus, I really like the idea of paying to own something instead of paying to have the right to use a service. So I took the plunge and bought an iPod. And oh my god, I love this thing. It kind of snowballed and now I listen to all my music on offline players (my iPod, MusicBee on Windows, and DeadbeeF on Mac), and when I absolutely have to stream (like to listen to a new album or podcast), I use YouTube Music. Even though its impact on my screen time is less significant than some other methods, I have to give it bonus points for the effect it's had on my general music consumption.
Beeper 10/10
Beeper my love. Basically, it's an app that groups all the messages you receive from multiple apps in one place. In my case, I really only use Messenger and Instagram (I could have connected Discord too, but I prefer to have it in a separate app), but oh my Demeter does it help. The only thing that prevents me from uninstalling Instagram is the messaging part. Now that I have an app that only shows me messages without giving me my feed, I don't spend time on Instagram anymore. I might go there once a day to see the stories of close friends that I actually care about (because I love my friends, you know). If there's one thing I could recommend, it's Beeper. At least just to try it out. It helps me a lot and I'm convinced it would help you too.
oLauncher 5/10
A great idea in theory, that didn't seem to work for me until very recently. It's a launcher where all the apps are written in words instead of having their colorful and distracting icons, and where the home page only contains a handful of apps that you select. And there lies the problem: if I want to put Instagram, Reddit, Tiktok, and Doordash (my favorite social media) on the home page because I use them a lot, there's absolutely nothing stopping me. Nonetheless, now that I have Beeper it works much better because all my social networks are hidden in the boring long list of apps and my important apps (like Govee Home which controls the lights in my room) are the only ones I see when I open my phone. Hooray.
Black and white mode 0/10
I love the idea right, not to be mean or anything, but sometimes I need color so I have a little button to activate/deactivate the filter, and uh, well I end up leaving it off all the time. I guess I don't have the willpower for that.
Website 4/10*
Surprisingly for all the time I spent on it, I got discouraged pretty quickly from continuing to work on it. Or at least on the first version, THAT'S RIGHT WE ARE SO BACK!! Now that I have a laptop and everything is set up on it, that my file structure is clear, that I write all my posts on Obsidian (which is much less annoying than writing them in VSCode), that I understand what I'm doing when I code and that everything is much simpler because I took the time to do the complicated stuff at the beginning, I want to work on it again. Who would have thought that all it takes is for it not to be a mess? So this method is still to be tested, but I feel like it's going to gain points in the coming months.
Just putting my phone further away 7/10
Well y'know, for a solution as simple as this, its effectiveness is honestly surprising. At my adult job, I put my phone in a corner where I have to stretch to reach it when I'm working. When I'm on my computer at home, I throw my phone onto the pillows at the other end of my bed. And it works pretty well, even if the temptation to make the extra effort is still definitely there. Kudos to my brain for controlling itself a little bit.
I'm definitely not done making adjustments to my lifestyle to use my phone less and less (like buying an alarm clock so I stop taking my phone when I get up in the morning), but I'm slowly starting to free myself from social media and appreciate downtime. Sometimes, it's nice to be in your own bubble.
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