You can't doom-scroll on this three-minute article

Hey there, it's Nicolas! Today, I want to talk about a topic that's very close to my heart: wasting time on your phone. I've lost countless hours on my phone, amounting to days or even weeks.

The first step when you want to stop wasting time on your phone is to be aware of the moments when you're losing time. The second step is to implement mechanisms to easily maintain control over all the applications that want to devour your attention. Interested in this topic? Then you're in the right place, because we're going to look at all of this together, and I promise, there's no doom-scrolling possible at the end of this article.

How we use our phones

Phones are omnipresent in society today. The average age for getting a first phone keeps getting younger. In France, this average is around 10 years old. That seems quite young to me, considering I got my first smartphone around the age of 14 (which might still seem young to some of you).

Children are getting phones at increasingly younger ages. However, they are rarely taught how to use them properly. The smartphone is a revolutionary tool that has changed our daily lives. But if you don't master its use, this tool becomes the master, taking control of your time and attention. You then find yourself losing so much of your precious time looking at things you'll forget within the hour.

Several phenomena (which I've also fallen victim to) can help you realize that it's the phone controlling you, not the other way around.

• You automatically open apps (often social media like Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, etc.) even though you initially picked up your phone for something else.
• As soon as boredom sets in, your first reflex is to take out your phone to “browse”.
• You regularly fall into the trap of doom-scrolling.

If these moments happen frequently, and use social media without a real purpose, you might need to regain control.

Notifications are a very effective mechanism to make you waste time. They entice you to return to the app for something trivial. And once that's done, you stay on the app to waste even more time.

Notifications are invitations to waste more time.

Solutions

Now that we've seen the different mechanisms that can make you waste time, let's look at what we can do to avoid falling into these traps again.

First, notifications. Disable as many notifications as possible; only keep the essential ones. For my part, I've disabled all notifications except for messages. This way, I stay reachable without having a flood of notifications on my phone screen.

In order to stop opening an app and doom-scrolling for several minutes without purpose, I can only recommend you download ScreenZen. It makes you wait for a few seconds before opening the targetted applications (everything is fully customizable). For example, if you've configured ScreenZen for Instagram, when you open the app, you'll have to wait 5 seconds before entering. This 5-second delay gives you plenty of time to regain your senses and ask yourself if you really want to access Instagram. After 10 minutes on Instagram, ScreenZen will reappear, blocking you again for 5 seconds. This time allows you to break out of the doom-scrolling stupor.

The phone is very attractive with all its vibrant colours. Look at the Instagram logo, the electric blue of Facebook, the red of YouTube, or the yellow of Snapchat.

All these colours catch the eye and entice us to click.

Aza Raskin, the creator of the infinite scroll, encourages us to switch our phones to black and white. Once the phone is in greyscale for all app logos, you stop going to an app because it catches your eye; you go there because you deliberately chose to.

Conclusion

Faced with all the apps trying to grab our attention and consume our time (with social media being the pioneers), it's important to implement mechanisms to protect ourselves.

• Disable unnecessary notifications: Be disturbed only when necessary.
• Set up a safeguard: ScreenZen will help you protect your time.
• Live in greyscale: Switch your phone to black and white. Have an easily accessible shortcut to turn it off (to view photos) at any time.

If you liked this article, feel free to leave a comment, we'd be delighted to respond!