But if it’s not YouTube, it’s the drama unfolding on Reddit or a TikTok For You page that keeps delivering hits. And no matter which app is responsible for capturing my attention, the result is usually the same: I’m back in the real world a few hours later, wondering where all that precious time went.
I’m sure I’m not alone here either. a 2021 Pew Research Center survey found that about 30 percent of adults in the United States reported being online “almost constantly.” Enough, I recently decided.
Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android operating systems come with tools to help reduce our screen time, though sometimes they feel a bit half-hearted. Still, they have helped me put down my phone and explore my new home a bit. This is what helped me get away from a world of content when the weekend rolls around.
By now, this has become a fairly well-understood trick: forcing your smartphone screen to display things solely in shades of gray is meant to mitigate the visual stimulus that keeps you coming back for more. And so far, it’s worked fine for me: streaming shows don’t look very good in black and white, and I can’t think too much about Wordle’s weekend guesses because I can’t tell a yellow square from a green one.
The setting to make the change from colorful to colorless is a bit out of the way, but don’t worry, we can set up shortcuts to make things faster.
- Open the Settings app, then tap Accessibility
- Under the “Vision” heading, tap Screen size and text
- Find the Color Filters option, tap the switch to turn it on and select Grayscale
Now all the color should be gone from your iPhone screen. To make it easier to switch back and forth, look for the Accessibility Shortcut option and select Color Filters; after that, three clicks on the power button should work.
- Open the Settings app, then tap Accessibility
- Under the “Display” heading, tap Text & Display
- Tap Color Correction and select Grayscale
To enable an on-screen shortcut button, find the color correction shortcut option and turn it on. You should see a small colored button that you can move around the screen as needed.
Beyond making my phone less visually appealing, I also wanted to put limits on, and sometimes temporarily disable, certain apps that I know I shouldn’t be using on Saturdays and Sundays.
There are a few ways to accomplish this on an iPhone, but some of them require you to manually change some settings every time you want to cut yourself off from the world. That feels a bit too fussy; instead, we’re going to tweak iOS’s Screen Time and Downtime features to do most of that work.
To get started, we need to decide which apps we want (or need) to keep using.
- Open the Settings app, tap Screen Time and turn it on if it isn’t already
- Once Screen Time is enabled, tap on the Always Allowed option.
- Find the apps you want to make sure you still have access to and tap the green button next to their names to add them to the list of allowed apps.
Now, you can manually turn downtime on and off. When it is running, you will be warned that you have reached your time limit whenever you try to open an application that is not on the allowed list. However, if you’re thinking of using this primarily on the weekends like I am, we can schedule downtime to run at specific times.
- In the Screen Time menu, tap the Schedule button to enable it
- Tap Customize Days and set the schedule that works for you
In general, Screen Time is not a perfect system to block your impulses; bypassing an app’s time limit only takes a few taps, for example. Still, I found that being asked if I’m sure I want to open a certain app gives me enough time to consider whether I really wanted to or was acting on some impulse to kill time.
If you have an Android phone made in the last four years, it probably has a set of “Digital Wellbeing” tools built in. Fortunately, it is somewhat easier to set up and schedule app limits.
- Open the Settings app and tap Digital Wellbeing & Parental Controls
- touch focus mode
- Tap the checkboxes next to each app you want to limit access to.
- To set when you want focus mode to run, tap Set a schedule at the top of the screen and select times that work for you
Once focus mode is running, you’re essentially closed out of the app entirely, unless you hit the button that gives you five more minutes. Again, it’s not a perfect solution, but it’s been helpful for me to unplug from screens when the work week is over.
Note: Some Android phones, such as certain Samsung Galaxy devices, give you the option to set multiple focus modes. If you try this feature on the weekends like I do and enjoy it, it might be worth exploring during the week.
What about phones without distractions?
Over the years, some companies have even tried to solve the problem by building dumb phones by design.
A boutique Swiss hardware company called punkt makes fancy phones good for calls, texts, and mobile hotspot use, but not much else. then there is the light phone IIa credit card-sized phone with an e-ink screen that can still play your podcasts and give you directions.
The idea of a phone that strips away everything but the essentials is appealing, at least to a former professional phone nerd like me. But even I couldn’t bring myself to buy any of these things, mainly for one reason: they’re a bit also limited.
None of those distraction-free devices let you install additional apps you can already rely on, which may make them not beginners like people’s only phones. It also doesn’t help that these devices aren’t exactly cheap: the Light Phone II is $299, while the latest Punkt model starts at $379.
If you have money to spare then sure, maybe one of these would make a great weekend companion. (Some people really enjoy using these minimalist phones as their daily drivers, though many couldn’t handle them.) But for me, the best play here is to use your phone’s built-in tools to reduce distractions in the right place. times and releasing its full functionality when needed.
Or, you could do what some of my co-workers have suggested: just leave your phone in a drawer or in another room so it can’t get stuck to it. You are a better person than me if you can make it.