How to get rid of Phone Addiction & Regain Control of Your Life

How many times has it happened to you that it’s 3 in the night and you’re staring at your phone? You wanted to fall asleep at 12, and now you are going to be late for tomorrow’s classes or college or just life in general?

You know this phone addiction, which you keep on having, is destroying your life slowly just because you can’t stop staring at a screen. This is extremely dangerous for you. I don’t think most people realize how much time they’re wasting on their cell phones because a lot of people ask, ‘How do you manage your content creation as well as medical studies and your internship?‘ I just tell them I don’t use social media that much. Because if you just take out the amount of time that you’re spending each week on Instagram, I’m 100% sure it is going to be more than 10 or 12 hours. Sometimes in worst cases, like even 20 hours per week.

If you give that 20 hours to creating something amazing, learning a new habit, or starting a business, it’s gonna be so much more productive for you. So today, in this article I’ll be telling you exactly how to take control of your life by decreasing your screen time and removing your phone addiction.

How to Take control of your life by decreasing screen time?

The first point is that you have to realize that you have a phone addiction. Most people, if asked if they are addicted to their phone, they’re like, ‘No, I’m not addicted. So, how much time I’m spending on Instagram? I’m spending like 3 hours per day.’ So, why are you spending that time? ‘I like it.’

So, do you think you should cut down your time? ‘Yes, but why should I?’ So, literally after asking somebody, ‘Do you think you should cut it down?’ They are like, ‘Yes, but why?’ The exact words of an addict. If you ask an alcohol addict, ‘Should you think you should cut down your alcohol?’ They’ll say, ‘I know how, but OK.’ So, the point is first thing is first; you have to realize that you are addicted. You have to realize that you are wasting your life on there. Until you have this realization, there is no point in this article. So just take control of your life and ask yourself, are you addicted?

My Story of Phone Addiction

Before I tell you the steps, I’ll tell you my addiction story. Back in lockdown, I think my screen time was roughly around six hours per day, which is pretty huge considering that it’s not even three hours in most of the days that I’m doing my work right now. And believe me, I’m like a social media content creator. What I spend my time doing is creating videos for you guys, growing my business, talking to amazing people, building relationships, and also working on myself.

So, my addiction journey started almost two years ago when I hit this realization. I’m spending way too much time on my phone. That’s when it hit me that I’m going to decrease my screen time, and today it’s been less than three hours consistently for weeks now. I’ve accepted that you’re excited, let me tell you what to do next. I’m pretty sure most of the addiction is coming from social media sites like Snapchat, Instagram, WhatsApp, threads, and Twitter, which is I think called X now. I think these are the apps where you’re spending the most time.

So, what most people would tell you is to uninstall the application. OK, get off of it. How many days is it gonna last? It’s gonna last like two days, three days. I’m going to be downloading the applications back; you’re going back on track.

Trust me, I did that as well. So what I’m telling you to do is that don’t quit all these applications; don’t uninstall them. Just set yourself a time. let’s say from evening, May 6 to 7:00 PM, I’m going to be spending my entire hour on social media. I’m going to be enjoying my YouTube videos; I’m going to be enjoying the Instagram reels. Because if you have allocated that time to yourself, let’s say that at 2:00 PM, you’re like, ‘OK, I’m going to scroll down.’ You’ll get this sudden rescue, ‘OK, I’m scrolling right now, as well as also scrolling in the evening.’ That’s a waste of time. But this is the time when I’m going to be using them. Trust me; it will take a little bit of willpower. If you have that after scrolling so much, then you can apply that. If you don’t have it left, I have some more tricks for you.

Increase Friction

The second point is increased friction. So there is this, I think, iPhone shortcut called us ‘take a break,’ and it’s also an application. It’s completely free of cost. What it does is that whenever you open your phone and you start to go to Instagram or whatever, it will just give you 5 seconds of break, and that is enough to increase the friction for you to realize, ‘OK, this is not worth my time. I’m gonna keep it.’ The second thing you can do is, of course, keep these applications on the last page of your application drawer. So it will take time for you to get to the first special last page. And in that way, you’ll probably realize, ‘OK, this is not worth my time.’

So increase friction between the phone as well as your application. What you can also do is set up reminders in between. So there are reminder widgets that you can place, and in these widgets, add the To-Do List which you have to do.

Let’s say you have to complete that question bank or whatever subject you’re trying to do right. You can add those in between so that what will happen once you start scrolling, you’ll realize, ‘OK,’ I have to study this first, and by the time you get to the last page, you’ll be like, ‘Sort of this party later.’

Lastly, you can uninstall the application, but once again, uninstalling is not the permanent solution; you’re going to be getting back at it. You’re going to be binging it like crazy, and in the end, you will have done more damage than good.

Track your Activity

The next point is to track your activity on your phone. It is very easy if you’re on Android, go open Digital Wellbeing, and if you are on Apple, open Screen Time, and you will see everything that is your data on your phone.

You analyze, ‘OK, I’m spending like two hours on WhatsApp, 3 hours on Instagram, and four hours on YouTube.’ So you just find out, ‘This is my analytics, and this week, I have to limit this down.’ And then throughout the week, you have to remember, ‘This is my goal; I won’t have to exceed it.’ So tracking your activity is a very good way to stay accountable as well as knowing what your current progress is.

The next thing is that I understand we cannot totally go off of social media; however, it is very tempting to do that for one year and make a video about it later. Let me know if you wanna see that. What you can do is whatever social media apps you’re using, you can change the way your feed looks. Like what do you mean by feed?

Also Read:- 10 top tips to help you get on top of your tasks

Create a new Social account

You might have the explore page for Instagram, your home base for YouTube, page for Snapchat. This is known as feed. So what you can do is, first of all, create an alternative account and follow only the essential things. That way your feed will be filled up with only study-worthy things or only very productive things.

So by creating a new account, all your earlier subscriptions are still in place, but at the same time, this new account will give you a fresh start to avoid all the distractions that come with, let’s say, scrolling YouTube. And 2nd, just go ahead and unsubscribe from all the channels that waste your time because honestly, time is the most valuable thing you have got. Money is nothing compared to time. You can make money infinitely. But you cannot regain the time that you have lost. And you don’t exactly know how much time you have left on this earth. Subscribe to channels that are good for you.

Also Read:- How to Remember the things I have Learned?

Replace screen time with Something Productive

The next thing is to replace that screen time while activity with something more productive. Why do we go to our phones? Because we are bored. That is the number one reason. If I’m just sitting on my bed, I don’t have anything to do; I just take my phone and start scrolling. That is the normal physiology of how it’s all working, right?

So what you can do is replace that activity with something which is much more interesting. For example, just pick up a guitar. OK, start playing. You will start to learn as you go. And what you’ll notice is that you will have less free time to use your phone. You will be very occupied.

So because I did not have time to look at my phone, how would I be wasting my time? As well as, you can start working on your goals, such as studying, whatever you’re trying. Just don’t be so free that you allow yourself to just take up your phone and start scrolling.

Set up Phone Free zones

The next is a very practical point, which I would like to give. Set up phone-free zones.

What do you mean by phone-free zones? For example, this table. This is my phone-free zone. If I’m studying over here, if I’m working over here, my phone is not going to be here because if this is here, I won’t be studying. I’m sure about that.

Another phone-free zone is when I’m having dinner. When I have dinner, no distractions, nothing. I just want to focus. I just want to have a nice time chatting with my family about how the day was, and how everything was. So that is one thing that you can also do.

Keep your charging station away

Next thing, another practical tip is to keep your charging station away from your workstation. I never keep my charging station near my study table. My charging station is way over there. So that is also what you can do. Allow your phone to be physically distanced from you. And what will happen is that you will see you forget about your phone at once.

Set up a One-Minute Rule

The next thing you can do is set up a one-minute rule. So you have heard about the 5-second rule, the five-minute rule, the 25-minute rule, and 21 days rule. So what I’m trying to say is the one-minute rule. Whenever you pick up your phone just for mindless scrolling, just give yourself one minute and ask yourself, ‘OK, in these 60 seconds, let me just do nothing. Let me just analyze what are my life choices. Let me just analyze how we get here.’ And just don’t open your phone, don’t unlock it. In that one minute, you’ll have so much realization that you’ll just keep your phone aside and feel like, ‘This is not a good way to be spending my time.’

DND or Airplane mode

The next thing is, again, using Zen mode, focus mode, or airplane mode, whichever you have in your phone. In that way, you can just block all the notifications all at once. So whenever you’re doing some deep work, let’s say studying, you won’t get a Snap notification, or Instagram notification. I don’t know, snap. So whatever you get that won’t distract you. That is what I say to you as well. Just put it on airplane mode, Zen mode, or focus mode. In the iPhone, you’ve got the focus settings; you can personalize it as you want. You can also set up a location-based focus, which means once you get into your home, everything will be blocked.

No-Phone Day

Lastly, this is going to be very difficult for most people to do: do a no-phone day.

This is basically like a divorce with your phone for that one day. You can use your mom’s phone to call, or you can use your friend’s phone to call. So, no-phone day. I used to have this a lot during my class 12 standard. There were multiple no-phone days, everyone, because it used to be distracting sometimes. Because talking to your friends all of that during the preparation is very distracting. You can do it for hours; you won’t even know it. I’m not saying that talking to parents is a bad thing, but essentially, if you are short on time, if you’re preparing for an exam, that is something that is not ideal.

So, I hope we have discussed more than 10 tips in this article. Follow them and let me know in the comments if you have improved urself.