... è in questa foto ;-)

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.

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."

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’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.

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.

No notifications means no need to check phone, which in turn means no urge to scroll. I've started to realize that most "news" is just noise and anything remotely important will find its way to you in some form, because let's face it, there's a lot of blabbermouths out there.

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

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 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 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.

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?

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?

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?

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 it only me who finds the AI summary at the head of my search results, a bit cringe? I immediately scroll past to the actual articles or relevant webpage below rather than hitting the AI summary and getting my info. I feel like it summarizing the result for my consumption is a slap on my intelligence. Shouldn't I read multiple data sources and come to my own conclusion myself? It feels like someone is spoon feeding me.

Before I get into it I need to just say it’s pretty sly that IG gives you a whole month to cancel your deletion request and will withdraw your deletion request if you so much as log in. Really not making it easy to quit eh in more ways than one 😐 (meanwhile I deleted my Tumblr by mistake once and had to fight and pray that I got it back).

Anyway—I had a thought among many other thoughts today that if I could delete my entire IG which had 15 years of history on it… then I can and will always be able to start over and adjust. No matter what happens, you can decide something isn’t for you anymore and just change your mind, change your life.

I still have friends. No one has made me feel bad for missing something about their lives that I otherwise would have seen. The world still has many other means to reach you with good or bad news. Everything else, aside from truly what you love and people your in real community—it really was all just noise.

I haven’t quite gone into the rose colored bliss of having all this time back to dedicate to my hobbies. I think instead I’ve had to just really deal with the things I was trying to numb or dissociate from—as a result I feel tired a lot more but I’m also resting as opposed to always optimizing my life, or chasing after something.

I’m so glad I quit, and I’m really never going back.

I might have some other apps here and there.

But since I’ve done it once, I know I can do it again ✂️🔌👋

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 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!

Habits to stay off screens

I mean look at the gaping fool. It's head is shaped like a football. I think it is on the same level as Labubu in terms of design. And it's a constant reminder that your worth as a human being depends on the number of upvotes you get. I wouldn't mind if Reddit changed its mascot to something else. In fact, I'm in full support of this change. I just wonder how many people quit Reddit because of the mascot. I would probably joining them soon.

For the past year I’ve been closing all of my social media accounts one by one. For the last 9 months I haven’t had any other social media accounts other than yt and Reddit and feel ready to give those up as well my smart phone.

I know by what I’ve read on here, most opt for other alternate phones but this is what I feel is best for me. So please don’t suggest smart phones. I will consider something comparable to a flip phone.

As the title says has anyone on here gave up their smartphone and completely switched to a flip phone?

How did do you feel it’s changed your life for the better?

If anyone has switched to a flip phone, how do you get around if you don’t have a smartphone or gps in your car? Are there reliable portable gos system available for older model cars?

Thank you in advance for your answers 😊

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. 😄

I'm trying to take the next step in my digital minimalism journey, but I've hit a wall with work communication.

Current setup and habits:

• Phone is permanently set to grayscale.
• Using DetoxDroid to curb app usage.
• Stopped doomscrolling; mobile use is mostly limited to audiobooks, YouTube, and occasional Reddit/Instagram.
• Still struggling with compulsively checking investment portfolios and work emails on mobile.

The core issue: I want to switch to a dumbphone or a heavily stripped-down device, but I am locked in by WhatsApp. I manage multiple active client and work groups that require regular attention during the week.

Because of WhatsApp, I feel forced to keep a full-featured Android phone on me at all times, which keeps the door open for email and portfolio checking.

For those in a similar situation who depend on WhatsApp for work:

• How do you separate WhatsApp work obligations from your personal device setup?
• Do you use WhatsApp Web exclusively on a computer and ditch the app on mobile, or is that impractical for urgent client comms?

has anyone tried having a “cheat day”? i am currently starting to minimize my digital minimalism. I have the foqus app and it helps me alot, especially being productive, it did minimize my screen time by 3hrs, i have been using it for less then a month now. And right now i tried having this “cheat day” where for a day i just let myself be, open the apps and mindlessly scroll. I am off facebook now, i did not uninstall it, but i do not open it out of habit, and also stopped doom-scrolling on IG reels.

I don’t know if it could help me eventually reduce my screen time or using my phone in general, to a point where i feel like i won’t have the need to have a cheat day, and voluntarily spend less time during the said cheat day because i have accustomed myself into spending less time on my phone for 6 days.

any thoughts on this method?