Almost a month ago, I dumbed down my smartphone. Here’s my report.
The immediate effect was about a one-third reduction in my overall screen time (my iPhone and iPad taken together), so even retaining some of the time-waster apps on my iPad made significant progress. This is because:
- The iPad cannot be used comfortably in bed, meaning I’m futzing around online less before going to sleep.
- The iPad cannot be used at work without raising, ummm, concerns with my boss. While I wasn’t wasting a lot of time on my phone at work, it wasn’t zero.
- As expected, this means that I mainly use my iPad at times when it’s “okay” to waste a bit of time, e.g., sitting at home.
A few weeks ago, I was looking over the books I had read this year and it’s an embarrassingly small number. I’ve been reading much more over the past month. To be fair, though, that may be due to the change in seasons, i.e., I always read more in the winter.
I did not track how many times I picked up my phone before and after the change, but I feel like it is far less. I leave it behind more often without noticing.
It hasn’t caused any serious inconvenience. Because it’s still a smartphone, I can use it for work-related tasks that would be more difficult (not impossible) with a true dumbphone.
It’s happened a few times that I wanted to look something up but couldn’t. The solution is easy enough: set up a reminder to look it up later.
While I was never the worst screen addict, I was too easily slipping into distraction when I could have been doing something better. (Note: not “more productive”–that’s a fool’s game. “Better.") So with minimal inconvenience, I have decreased screentime and increased reading. I call that success.