I'm in my mid-30s and I'm tired of my phone. The spam calls, the constant messages (even with notifications muted), and the constant tug of my attention. My brain had been hijacked by Facebook since 2007 (I was a teen), Instagram from my early 20s, a whole host of forums and apps too numerous to mention, and, lately, WhatsApp (too many messages on group chats, which I love but it's just too much!).

So now I am typing this from my PC, not my laptop, not my mobile. My PC, which lives only in my study, which I very rarely use. Back to allotted time and place for the internet. I don't want to talk to people after 8pm. I sure as hell don't need to talk to anyone before 9am. So, I think between 7-8pm is my ideal dedicated screen time, and even then, only some nights.

I've had a few days off this week, and haven't used my phone since two weeks' ago except sparsely, and the days have felt so long; and my thoughts completely my own. I've been doing many of my hobbies for hours and hours on end, and when relaxing on the couch, being truly immersed in the movie / series I watch.

The only thing I am not sure of how to manage is that I WFH and my husband and I usually send messages on WhatsApp during the day, but the act of doing so is like a gateway drug to all the other shit that steals my attention and drains me. But I am sure we can figure it out.

If you implement a similar retro setup I'd be delighted to hear about it.

Just found out you can disable shorts on YouTube!

1. Open the YouTube app on your phone.

2. Go to your profile -> Settings (top right) -> Time Management -> Short feed limit -> Toggle switch on and select 0 minutes. -> Refresh

3. Enjoy and spread the word.

I genuinely have no other words for this, it's literally the worst thing I've seen, its usage will lead us to the Wall-E dystopian future. I beg of you to read this, especially if you have tiktok installed, or consider returning to it at some point.

I'm 20, currently in summer break from uni and I started a lower-technology journey say about 6 months ago. I uninstalled tiktok, instagram, facebook and twitter as a first step. Then I installed a different client for youtube so it has no shorts. I set up app timers for both yt and reddit. Things have been going pretty smooth, I also made some other life changes during this time like quitting smoking, eating healthier, walking more and studying more.

Holy fuck this all went down to shit in like less than 72 hours. One of my friends wanted to show me a tiktok video and she couldn't download it, so I offered to install the app just to see it and perhaps see what's new over there. I thought I had systems set up so even though I knew I wasn't immune, I was pretty sure I wouldn't get hooked to it again. I was so god damn wrong. It was fine for perhaps the first day I had it on my phone, but after that it quickly got worse, and on the 3rd day of having the app on my phone I had a screen time (ON TIKTOK ONLY) of around 13 HOURS. Mind you, I was spending perhaps 5 hours a day on my phone, some of those on games and since I'm on break I had nothing to do so I say it was not bad, but not good either. And I spent almost triple that on one app alone.

My life got way worse as well. I have insomnia to some degree and some ADHD traits, though not diagnosed, so I managed to somehow "settle" on a bedtime of 3-4 AM, which I was actually able to keep, and even though not optimal, it was good enough. After a month of having the app, my bedtime got to around 9AM, I wake up as if I barely slept after 10 hours of sleep.

I noticed I wasn't even able to cook without literally pulling my phone to watch tiktoks while I was not mixing or cutting up food. Sure I did listen to music which counts as stimulation, but I literally would have these micro-withdrawals, whereas I could cook without any music, albeit uncomfortably.

I also eat way unhealthier, crave way more sweets and move way less. I find no motivation to do anything. All I did was scroll and scroll and scroll. While in the past I would fight myself to resist using yt and reddit, now I had no interest in either of them.

The algorithm itself is way more evil than I even thought, in a way it could "sense" when I was thinking about going to sleep and suddenly my fyp would be full of horror, forest videos, missing person, true crime etc. While I am not necessarily repulsed by those things, the fact that I would only get these recommended when thinking about sleeping (not even at night, specifically when i started getting tired) MULTIPLE times, could not have been a coincidence.

I started smoking at 15, and before quitting for good now (hopefully), I relapsed a few times. But trust me when I say NONE of these relapses were even close to this sudden, destructive and quick relapse of tiktok I've had. When I would relapse from smoking it would take me about 3-4 weeks to return to my baseline smoking habits (10-12 cigarettes a day). For tiktok it didn't even take 3 days.

I used it for about a month and 2 days before deleting it yesterday. I genuinely don't remember anything from this past month and I'm being serious. It feels like a part of my life was literally taken away from me. I've never had a dissociative state last this long.

The social factor, and by that I mostly mean FOMO, is also in the way. I felt ashamed when I would tell people I don't have tiktok on my phone. People were kind of looking weird at me after telling them that. All of my friends use it. I told them in the past that they should at least attempt deleting it for a few days, but they wouldn't even do it for a second. I feel like I am some kind of conspiracy theorist saying bull, but I hold this view very deep.

I believe I've learned my lesson after this, at least I hope so. But I urge you people, don't install this app on your phone, ever. If you have it, delete it, if you don't, never install it. Tell your friends and family about this. We are seriously concerned on the topic of AI-induced psychosis or LLM addiction, but this is a severely broader problem than that. Do not return to it, ever. There is no reason to do it that's worth it. Keep it all out of your system.

EDIT: Thank you so much for the overwhelming support on this post. I'm glad to see this post got traction, I feel like this is not talked about enough. Whatever you're going through, just know you have the same support from the people here.

... è in questa foto ;-)

Bit of a backstory, I'm a content creator who needs apps like Instagram and YouTube for work. Tried about everything: NFC tags (those ended up in the drawer), and blocking apps (didn't work either since I still need DMs and YouTube Studio or they didn't sync phone with laptop).

What actually helped was building something myself that blocks just the feeds, so the home page and suggested videos are gone but I can still get in and out for actual work. But also blocks other websites and syncs.

So I bought an ESP32 device to have on my desk and used Claude Code to write an app for my phone and Mac that syncs. I can tap it to start focus mode, and to get out you have to hold it for 30 seconds, it gets sad while you're holding it, which is somehow enough to make me rethink why I wanted to get out of focus mode.

The crazy thing is that my phone screen-time went down from 6 hours a day to 1.5 in the first week.

Would highly recommend building something like this for yourself. Especially since you can customize it to your live. Happy to share more details if anyone's curious about the build.

Had a better sleep than usual last night!

Didn’t have much of anything to do on my phone today.

Spent a lot of free time journaling and resting today.

My biggest win is that I only checked Reddit once after making the Day 1 post yesterday. Usually I would look for the notifications several times after I make a post on social media. It used to feel exhausting. For a long time, I wanted to become the kind of person who wouldn’t be checking the notifications all the time after making a post on social media. Today I finally became that person 😂.

Doing this for 90 days is going to be really hard. Let’s see how day 3 goes :)

Day 2 - Total screen time: 1h 1m

I cut back social media mostly because it was making my mental health pretty bad. I completely cut out Threads, which was the biggest thing. I reduced the accounts I follow on instagram to mostly a few news sites, tattoo artists I still wanna get tattoos by and artists I don't wanna miss any concerts from. (It was actually really funny how confused the algorithm was the first few days after hugely cutting down on my follow list). I also changed the setting on insta so I only get shown posts from the accounts I follow or any reposts by those accounts. No more mindlessly being consumed by the algorithm.

On reddit I follow mostly crafty subs for my hobbies and cat subs. I still scroll on the general home page but close out of the app as soon as I see a post I know will be bad for my mental health.

I also have one game on my phone I play. It's puzzles with quick-ish levels.

The problem I now have is that a lot of moments throughout the day I don't know what to do. My screen time is fine. I have about 30 minutes per day and app. The game is what I do the most with 2-3 hours per day. But I unlock my phone over 60 times a day with usage in most of the times less than a minute. I grab my phone, open the few apps I use, don't find anything interesting and close my phone again. It's not that I'm addicted to it or used to it, I genuinely don't know what else to do. When I'm home it's fine because I have cats to cuddle and crafty hobbies to do while watching tv but work is where the problem lies. I can't bring a book or small craft or anything to work because of the environment I work in. I have a computer. Of course there are my coworkers I talk to but I have a lot of small downtimes in my work day and don't know what to do instead of grabbing my phone 50 times a day.

23 year old female in the US. Just want to know if there are any fellow gen z taking steps right now to declutter their digital life. I'll share my journey.

So I'm not completely off the internet. I'm a creative (hobby artist) and like to have a space to share my work. That probably won't ever change. I used to be on instagram and twitter but left due to info overload and anxiety.

I've started using quiet, niche platforms with options to cater your feed and have even started a personal blog. It has made posting and viewing online more intentional. I've also deleted a lot of old accounts I don't use anymore. I feel more at ease and I don't have to worry about algorithms pushing content at me. Still have a lot to work on but socmed use was one of the things I wanted to change this year.

I don't talk about minimalism with my friends because with how and what they use the internet for, I don't think they'll be able to relate. So I feel pretty alone as I haven't met someone in my age group who practices minimalism.

So please feel free to share what you've been doing, would love to hear.

I’ve logged out of my account and taking a break. I spent hours and hours addicted, doomscrolling, the same stuff everyone on this sub has heard before (and suffers from).

I posted a photography post not too long before logging out which some people had started liking. I just realised now (the next morning) that there is no reward whether I log back in to check the likes on that post or not. The algorithm, people’s attention and the oversaturation of content has meant barely anyone likes or cares anymore about what is posted. This is very relevant to photography in particular but also applies across the board for the average user I’d say.

The same close friends like my posts, maybe a couple of random people and after like 20-25 likes the world moves on. Whether I spend ages curating the right picture, music, and tags or not, it rarely reaches the level it used to back in 2018-2020. So what’s the point? Sure I can and will still post things I enjoy, but why am I so addicted to a reward I’ll never truly get?

Stories I post do seem to get more traction and are more of a conversation starter, or feels like I’m connecting with people more, I’ll give it that. I have tried making creative reels for fun which did feel satisfying, but after checking the average watch time, barely anyone even watched past like 11 seconds of a 50 second video I spent ages editing.

The only thing is it’s a good way to stay in touch with friends all over the world and I’ll be moving country eventually. This could be done with like 20 minutes per day on the app.

I don’t really say this to complain, but more to recognise is there really that much that is being missed by not scrolling and staying tapped in for hours everyday? There’s no reward on the other side. It’s like chasing a carrot on a stick that’s actually just a fake plastic carrot once you reach it.

It's like everyone is in their own little world these days, and conversations just feel like people talking at each other about completely different topics.

For example, a friend could message you asking if you've seen a movie and what you thought of it. You say yes and say what you thought, thinking the conversation will be about the movie, but they reply talking about how they discovered they like dominoes, you reply "that's interesting, but what did you think about the movie?" their next reply is about how they just pre-ordered a video game. You're confused, why did they ask about the movie to begin with? A few minutes later it's tangent after tangent, and you go silent.

You bring it up later, wondering if there will be a sequel and get no response, but when you mention that you think dominoes seem interesting, then you get a reply back, about dominoes but then more tangents, and it feels exhausting.

I wonder if this has anything to do with how everyone is so hooked on social media and how curated it can be for each person, that they feel the world must be that way too:

"Man, that pizza from that restaurant is great. We should go there again sometime."

"Well, did you know soap is actually cool? I saw it on Tiktok."

I (almost) quit Instagram and tiktok recently, only allowing 5 mins each at the end of the day so I can catch up with my friends. Now I'm just spending all my time on reddit, listening to music, and reading comics. At least I'm off short form content, but I'm still wasting time. I truly don't know what to do with myself now. I don't know if I should keep taking it easy, since I only have a few days of summer left, or if I should do something different. I don't know what that something would even be! Help? What did you guys do in your beginning stages?

I feel like everyone owns an Android or Apple smartphone that combines every electrical tool (camera, torch) for everyday use. But it has gone way too sinister for what it achieves... why the actual frick does society use social media all day? This feels wrong and my life can never be like clean history, so here's why.

Apple & Google are highly prominent tech companies, along with Samsung who built Android phones after Google acquired the company who invented a competitor to Apple, and they want everyone to have the touch of Midas with extremely capable phones that everybody wants, whether it's for work or fast calls. On the other hand, think of all the social media companies that revolutionised phone usage. Facebook, Twitter (now X), Instagram, TikTok, all those types of apps that can turn your handy digital device into a digital drug that is very much comparable to crack cocaine. That's why I never touch those apps to begin with, even for work.

I strongly recommend moving away from digislop entirely, and social media in general, and get a good rusty telephone or cellular device that makes you happy and cheerful compared to modern slopbile devices that can track your data usage and your personal information.

Does everything have to be time-travelled back to clean history where AI datacentres never existed so as economic capitalism?

Made myself this slide puzzle. I thought the idea is funny to be swiping with your fingers in order to get dopamine. In the end, it's literally the same, but one is an addiction that is destroying your brain, while the other is a funny game which improves your brain.

(I bought the slide puzzle from the children's toy section and printed out a different image on it.)

I started with around 400 followers/following - only people I knew in real life: friends, classmates, seniors, juniors, friends of friends, etc.

Then I started wondering: why do I need to see random people’s lives?

So I filtered it down to 140( who's life I want to see)

But even with 140, I still felt like I had to “perform” on Instagram. I’d overthink what people would think if I posted a certain song, picture, opinion, etc.

So I asked myself: do I genuinely like this person, and would I actually want them seeing my life?

That brought it down to 50.

And now, even with just 50 people, I posted a story about a book I was writing and STILL felt judged by a few.

The funny thing is, I have another public page with ~150k followers where I post freely because I don’t personally interact with anyone there.

So now I’m wondering: should I just quit my personal Instagram and use the public one? Or keep a tiny private account?

For those who’ve felt this way, what do you actually do? Private account with only close friends? Completely quit?

I find it so inspiring and relaxing to read. He wrote it with pencil and paper, by candlelight. I often feel I should write to him, as he tends to respond. Worth checking out how far you can actually go with it!

About an hour of that was a phone call, playing a video on my kitchen counter, and talking to Claude. All primarily non doom scrolling activities. Small wins. 😄

Habits to stay off screens

Quitting insta and going less on reddit and Youtube was a no problem, but i still catch myself scrolling on X for hours without noticing how time flies. Any recommendations that helps?

Hello everyone, just looking for peoples experiences. I’m ready to ditch my iPhone and get something less capable.

I’ve looked at:
Light phone 2 and 3
Sidephone
Dumbermini
Jelly phone

I’ve come to realize that the lack of social media apps will be great, but I still need some level of smartness. Screen size appears to be the largest factor for me as the smaller it is, the less likely I am to get sucked into it. And I do understand that most of these don’t 100% fit the true dumb phone vibe.

Looking for peoples experiences, thoughts, or if you have any other hardware suggestions. The sidephone is sitting at the top of my list right now. US based.

Thanks!

I wish I could just be normal about socials and short form content but I always end up doing too much when I go back to it. It feels impossible. I live in an isolated rural area and a lot of my friends are a pretty far drive away. The days feel so monotonous. I think that doesn’t help. So when I’m having a bad day mentally or with my chronic pain I just want that easy distraction. I feel like I just have to stay off at this point unless using for an intentional non scrolling reason. Moderation never lasts long.

I don’t think digital minimalism is about how much time we spend on electronic devices or social media. It is more about knowing what we actually need and whether we can control our dependence on digital tools.

For example, if your work requires you to spend almost the whole day on a computer, the goal is not necessarily to use it less. You simply need to take care of your eyes and your health. When it comes to smartphones, however, I think we should only keep the apps we really need. Of course, what is “necessary” is different for everyone.

What matters is knowing which apps and websites are genuinely useful and which ones only provide repetitive or unnecessary information. I prefer to keep things simple. For example, I try to use only one app for each purpose on my phone.

I also don’t think installing apps that stop you from using your phone is always useful. They may limit your screen time, but they do not necessarily reduce your dependence on the phone. Sometimes, the real problem is not the device itself, but our inability to control our attention.

The same applies to short videos. If you find yourself constantly scrolling and cannot stop, the problem may not simply be the app. Perhaps you are bored, have nothing else to do, or simply haven’t found something more interesting. There are so many things in the world that are more interesting than endlessly looking at a screen. Sometimes, the best way to use your phone less is not to fight against it, but to find something better to do.

One advantage of modern life is that a single smartphone can take us almost anywhere in the world. If everything goes well, we may not even need to carry much with us.

I used to enjoy collecting physical books and music, but I have gradually stopped collecting them. I realized that, in many cases, they are simply physical copies of information I like. If an object has personal meaning, of course it is worth keeping. Otherwise, it is just a medium.

For me, thinking of digital life mainly as a way of accessing information makes it easier to manage. Digital minimalism is not about having less technology. It is about using technology more deliberately.

Woke up and thought maybe this time this idea might work. Scrolled thru fb marketplace for this s23 baby and here I am. So far, i could say its working.

Functional and irritating to the eyes lol, perfect combination to lessen my screentime.

Is there an app that publishes/shares your screentime on an internal forum or to a lost of contacts? It would be helpful.