My iPhone tracks how much time I spend on it each day and gives me a weekly summary of my average usage so that I feel even worse about myself than I already do. I suppose it is some tacit acknowledgement by Apple to have even included such a tool on a device it is selling to us by the millions that they know their product is a kind of shiny death, the digital keys to our analog doom.
By including the tool in the very device that is killing us, they likely feel they’ve done their due diligence in absolving themselves of wrongdoing. Essentially, they’ve admitted that YOUR PHONE IS DEATH by putting the power of that very information in the palm of your hand—as though excessive and often pointless information isn’t exactly the problem in the first place.
This “productivity tool” even breaks my usage down by categories, including social, finance, utilities, games, information and reading, and other. The numbers in this report are nothing short of staggering, and I would otherwise be embarrassed to admit it except that I know I’m not alone.
More than 5 hours. Per day. That’s how much I’m on my phone. That is an amount of time that you simply cannot hide from, an amount that is like willingly catapulting yourself towards the cold embrace of Steve Jobs, as though you’re saying, “Please, make me dead faster. I’m not doing anything anyway, so why not?”
Some of this usage, of course, is merely a change in how people consume information. Where our grandparents or parents would sit with their morning coffee and read the physical newspaper, we read the news on our phones, and not just from one news organization, but as many as we care to search out.
But “news” falls into a category that I consider “acceptable use.” We all probably have our own categories of acceptable use, but a couple that feel outside of acceptable use/destructive for me include social and games. The daily count: 90 minutes of social media; 30 minutes of game(s). The game in question is Boom Beach (it was once Clash of Clans, Boom Beach’s equally addictive predecessor, and prior to that it was Farmville).
In these simplistic games, you build a world daily, repeating essentially the same tasks again and again until you’ve invested so much time into your world creation that to simply walk away would be to admit that all the time you’ve put into it has truly been wasted. At this point, I don’t even want to be there—I just feel obligated (like staying in an unfulfilling relationship because it’s just easier not to leave, plus all the shared stuff!).
And then there is social. My god, is there social! Tiktok and Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook, Pinterest and X, on my! An entire ecosystem dedicated to naval gazing and gossip generation! A narcissistic black hole buffet that Zuckerberg and others have thrust upon us in the name of, what… being more social? As if we are not now more alone than we’ve ever been.
In fact, this is a problem so widespread and so serious that there is, of course, a bunch of goddamn apps for that. And a hashtag! It’s called “monk mode” (#monkmode), and videos tagged with the term on Tiktok have more than 77 million views, according to a BBC story on the subject, which also mentions helpful apps with names like “Freedom” that allow you to turn off social media without deleting it so that you can dedicate yourself to a single task.
Freedom app. Because social media is enslaving us to ourselves—and not our better natures. Still, the BBC story also gives us simple humans, so easily chained and entertained, an easy out: Numerous studies in recent years highlight the addictive nature of these apps. And as one app creator notes, “Meta employs hundreds of scientists to make the app more stimulating. That’s not a fair fight for the average person.”
But I’m a slightly above average person, and so I’m taking steps. Baby steps, to be sure, but steps all the same. First, I’ve defined for myself what is acceptable use in both tools and time. For me, for now, it’s up to 3 hours per day, with most of that coming in the form of news and information. I’m also implementing little incentives. For example, I often find myself using my phone while I’m watching a TV show, thereby forgetting what’s happening on the TV show (rewind). And so I’m changing my subscriptions (Netflix, etc.) to the ad-supported versions, and only accessing my phone during commercials. Take that, advertising and increasingly expensive streaming services!
There are other steps I could take as well, but I’m not sure how far I want to take it all at once. I could, for example, remove a gaming app, and add in its place an educational app, so that when I feel a need for entertainment I’ll be left with no choice but to learn something of actual value.
And of course I could leave my phone at home when I go on daily walks. Still, that’s something I hesitate to do, because what if something noteworthy happens, or even something incredible that would bring me some amount of fame and fortune? What if FOMO happens! I don’t want to miss FOMO! Even though the truth is, nothing like that has ever happened to me in the last decade. Although one time I did find a discarded ham-and-cheese sandwich that appeared to have been in a significant head–on collision, throwing the ham and cheese in one direction, the bread in another. In fact, you can watch that riveting video on my Instagram!
Here’s what I keep reminding myself of: You only get one today. And I know in my heart that my best today will not be lived inside my phone. So I’m taking steps*.
Full disclosure: I checked my phone no fewer than a dozen times while writing this. But… I also deleted Boom Beach and in its place I’ve subscribed to Babbel.
*Let me know your own challenges and efforts in this area.
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