Sorry I doubted you, Screen Time

Salvation was right under my nose all along

My phone is relentless. It calls to me like a siren in one of those Greek poems I pretend to have read, an ever-throbbing pull that shrieks, “hey bud, go on, pick me up, you like cool shit, right? well I’ve got the coolest and strangest and funniest shit to show you, so, go on, put your filthy fingers all over me.”

Despite this, I fight. I battle the impulse to Always Be On My Phone in the manner of a hero from one of those Roman poems I pretend to have read.

Thankfully, some things have helped me resist this siren call.

One thing I find broadly successful is avoiding looking at my phone first thing in the morning and last thing at night.

It helps, certainly, but sometimes it’s not enough and I fall back into familiar patterns.

For example, I’ll be writing and hit a roadblock. And then what’s the first thing I do? Go on social media. Flick through some cool shit. Try and forget the crushing reality of existing in a world that’s trying to monetise every spare second of my life and turn my brain into some sort of delicious, Cadbury Egg-style goo.

While this habit is worse when I’m on my phone first thing, it still lingers — even when I practice good cyber hygiene. Unfortunately, I’m an unintentional magnet for digital dirt.

Imagine, if you will, the baked beans are being online all the time and looking at cool shit, and I’m the woman bathing in the aforementioned of baked beans. It’s a tough ask, I know, but I believe we can do it together.

A sensible route might be deleting the attention-sucking apps… but really? You think? Really? You really think? You think I should delete those apps? You really think that?

I could argue it’s important for me as a writer and journalist to be aware of what’s happening online, but that’s finding excuses. Social media is fun. There’s wild shit on there. And I like that.

The question, then, is one of balance. But how do you quantify that?

Well, the other week I came across a report from the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology that suggested people should only spend about 30 minutes a day on social platforms.

Without going into too much depth, the idea is this amount of time gives you the benefits of social media (information, feeling of connection, and so forth), without the raft of negative effects, like depression, anxiety, and the dreaded FOMO.

I can see the truth in that.

The longer I spend on social media, the more it feels like something valuable is being sucked from me. On the days where I only have a cursory glance at the main offenders everything is fresher, like I’m using them — not the other way around.

Here’s the rub: saying 30 minutes is all well and good, but achieving that is a completely different thing. What do I do? Keep a spreadsheet each day? Start a stopwatch? Get an app?

It was at this point of my journey I realised just how foolish I’d been — I hadn’t even considered Screen Time.

You maniacs! It was here all along.

Like most of you who use Apple devices, each week I receive a little notification saying how much time I spent on my device.

This, like the majority of my issues, I ignore.

I glance at all the time I’ve squandered on my phone, before pushing the feeling that I’m wasting the precious gift of life, deep, deep down and hope it turns into a harmless, harmless stomach ulcer.

Anyway, who knew that a feature designed to manage your screen time could help me manage my screen time?

Using it was a breeze.

I selected the four apps I waste the most time on (Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, and TikTok) and placed them in a group with a combined 30 minute daily limit.

When I hit 25 minutes of use across that spread of software, I’m told I have five minutes left. After that, I’m shown a screen blocking me from using them.

This, friends, is that screen.

And, whisper it with me, Screen Time works.

It’s not just that it stops me using social media for more than 30 minutes a day, it’s also wormed into my brain. Now, whenever I open an app, I question whether it’s what I want to be doing, asking myself if I should spend my allotted Instagram time at that very moment.

A positive side effect of this is I’m spending more time reading articles on apps like The Athletic or The London Review Of Books. Effectively, it’s a way of deprogramming my reptile brain from flicking endlessly through flashing colours and over-compressed music.

The question is whether it’ll last.

There’s something horrendously inevitable about wasting time on social media. It’s like a dynastic sports team. You pray they won’t win, that someone can stop them, but, in the end, they have an unavoidable momentum that crushes all comers.

And let’s not forget my own underhand ways.

I put a limit on TikTok, so I’m now spending more time on YouTube. I can’t use Twitter on my phone, but I still can on my computer. Can I use Reddit if I want to ask a question?

Still, Screen Time is helping. It’s another arrow in my anti-addiction quiver. And maybe, just maybe, if I wish upon a star and a magical cricket appears, I can string enough of these hacks together to actually have a healthy relationship with my phone.

But I might also not.

There’s a lot of cool shit online after all, and someone’s got to look at it.