Beating Smartphone Addiction · Synthesizer School

Nov '22 (edited) in Other

Beating Smartphone Addiction

Hi there everyone,

it's been some time since I last wrote. In part it has to do with the experiment I was successfully conducting, which I will explain here:

SUCCESSFULLY BEATING MY SMARTPHONE ADDICTION:

My current total smartphone use is roughly 10 min. a day. This includes doing my online-banking and other vital things I NEED to do on my smartphone. So basically I put my smartphone back in it's place and degraded it to a basic work tool, like a Swiss Army knife. I've been doing this for two months now.

WHY DID I DO IT?

Over the last couple of months I felt, that my smartphone use was slowly surging. I was always conscious about my use and have been tracking it for years (I use the free app "YourHour" for this).

This surge came in waves. My biggest time waster on the smartphone is "political news". I admit that witnessing the crazy events of the last years, I became somewhat of a conspiracy nut and I wasted a lot of time in reading or watching political commentary, mostly from the so called "alternative media".

The app I used most for it was Telegram. I don't have (and never had) any active social media accounts (Facebook, Insta, TikTok, Snapchat, nothing).

As I said, my phone use was becoming excessive and it crossed 2 hours on some days. This was way too much for me, as a married man and father of three kids. So I needed to do something.

WHAT ID DID:

I tried many things before to contain my smartphone use, I even bought one of those kitchen safes, which have a time-lock. But nothing really worked.

What did the trick for me, was the Nokia 105. A €20,- dumb phone.

I got a second sim-card on the same number and put it in the dumb phone. But reflecting on this I think you don't even need a second sim (which costs extra) and simply put your one sim-card inside the dumb phone, so people can reach you.

And then you switch the smartphone: OFF. Not mute, not in flight mode. OFF.

And it remains this way most of the day. Except for maybe 10 or 15 min., when I need it for online-banking, etc. The rest of the time it remains dead. Sometimes for several days.

WHAT I FOUND:

Smartphone addiction is a feedback loop. Meaning: The more you use your phone, the more you WANT to use your phone.

Breaking the loop through switching to a dumb phone, gradually decreases the desire to constantly check the phone and do, whatever you prefer to do there.

I also found the same is true for pornography, another addiction of mine. Even if this is a bit off topic here, I mention it, because it might help someone.

The less I consume pornography, the less my DESIRE to do it. Killing my smartphone helped break this viscous circle too, so it was really a 2 in 1 for me. My porn habit fell from roughly 10 times a week to around 1 or 2 times a week. I'm not entirely over it, but it's a drop of 80-90%. So it's a huge step forward.

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES:

During this time I became very aware of the topic of addiction and found interesting resources.

One is a book, called Dopamine Nation.

Even though it treats addiction in general it is very useful to understand smartphone addiction (or porn addiction) too. And it made me understand many of my own behaviors.

The second is a video by Cold Fusion called: The Anti-Smartphone Revolution

POSITIVE SIDE EFFECTS:

The video explains many of the positive effects I personally witnessed during my decreased smartphone use. Especially like the girl in the video, I too never thought that I was an "anxious" person, but after coming down from my phone addiction, I suddenly noticed how nervous I was all of the time.

So being less anxious must be no. 1 on that list.

Then come increased mental powers. I thought I couldn't read a book anymore, but now I find I can easily read 30 or 50 pages (depending on the book) in one sit without getting nervous. My urge for constant interruption is dead, so now I can focus again.

This goes for work as well. I used to be totally dependent on the 20/5/20/5 minute work style (I think it is called pomodoro technique) because I couldn't bring myself to focus any longer than 20 min. before a smartphone or porn break. Now I mostly abandoned this technique and use it only when I need to plow through tasks, which are uncomfortable for me.

TO SUM IT ALL UP:

After two months of experimenting, I can say that I conquered my smartphone addiction and I don't see myself returning to my previous lifetime any time soon.

I felt how the smartphone was sucking the life out of me and that I didn't want that any more. And by buying a dumb phone and still keeping the smartphone for special online-tasks, I found that the feedback loop can be broken and eventually even killed.

I hope this was useful for you and if I can inspire even one person to tackle their own addiction, then writing this long post was well worth it.

Keep up the good work!

Carlos

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