a mini 1: it really is your phone

when was the last time you did something without background music?

last year, I listened to 58,573 minutes (approximately 976 hours) of music and podcasts on spotify. that’s not including the numerous hours I spent listening to 11 audiobooks on audible, or the countless video essays and vlogs I watched on youtube.

my friend with his flip phone after backpacking in alaska for a month. june 2022.

when I started my journey to ‘break my addiction’ to social media and my phone in general (my strategy can be seen in this instagram post), I never thought I would stop listening to music as well.

at first, the goal was a complete overhaul of the way I used my phone: I deleted youtube, netflix, amazon prime, and tiktok in one fell swoop, and outsourced my screen time passcode to my boyfriend so he could monitor my extremely harsh social media limits. this took my average screen time down from 8 hours to 4 hours a day almost instantly.

but without something to replace the dopamine hits I gained from short form content, I quickly found myself scrolling on (sorry in advance) linkedin shorts. which, to be fair, is very hard to binge. because how many times can you see someone younger than you talk about starting a multi-million business while you’re just trying to enjoy some toilet screen time?

slowly but surely, like a baby weening off of a bottle, I rewired my brain away from short form content. I replaced the tiktoks and reels and linkedin shorts with substack essays and vocabulary studying and my kindle, and I felt my brain mold itself back from the previous mushy state it was in. now my screen time hovers around 3.5 hours a day, with most of that being instagram (5 hours a week, rather than 5 hours a day), messages, and maps.

via pinterest

I never thought breaking up with short form content would result in me craving less stimulation in general. as I used my phone less and less, I noticed a shift in the way I interacted with it altogether. I was constantly forgetting to bring headphones with me when I left the house, opting to hear the screeches of the underground (I live in london) over chappell roan or noah kahan. it got so bad that even though I made the perfect playlist for my new york half marathon, I forgot to bring headphones with me on the day, resulting in the majority of the run being completed in silence. (my boyfriend, who was running with me, brought his wired headphones in his pocket. I used them for a 3 mile stretch down FDR drive where there were no spectators and I was notably in The Pain Cave and needed a distraction).

a snippet of my ‘perfect new york half marathon playlist’

this morning, I went for a walk to a new coffee shop and deliberately didn’t bring my headphones with me. I’ve gotten so used to sitting in my own silence that the thoughts in my head don’t scare me like they used to. I’ve realised that, once you let your thoughts say their piece, your head is actually a pretty quiet place to be in.

not only that, but my senses are sharper as well: I’m more in tune with the sights and smells around me because one of my senses, my hearing, isn’t being stimulated. going on a walk is more enjoyable because time passes differently. I’m no longer counting the length of time by how many songs I’ve listened to or constantly unlocking my phone to change the song. my walks just are.

it’s only march, and I wonder how this newfound appreciation of the sounds around me will affect my spotify wrapped this year. maybe my top artist will be ‘the sounds of the city around you.’

by Thomas Lélu

the issue with music and short form content and the constant need to ‘have something playing’ is that we never let our mind rest. I find that the days where I’m overusing my phone, it’s harder for me to fall asleep and stay asleep. my brain is racing with all the thoughts I haven’t acknowledged and the things I have yet to do but didn’t make time for. not one of those thoughts pertain to the content from the 2 hours of scrolling I did before bed — I don’t even remember what I watched.

if you want to be truly humbled by your phone usage, try this screen time calculator from unplugged. it’s a sobering experience. you’ll realise how much of your life is spent staring at a screen, and how much of it doesn’t need to be.

this is the result if I was 24 years old and used my phone 8 hours a day, which was my reality until only a few months ago.

this is a larger conversation than just the individual, the consumer. it’s brash not to acknowledge the role of corporations and software engineers and behavioural scientists who have engineered the UX to be so addicting that we can’t help ourselves, we need to keep scrolling. but the solution isn’t to bury our heads in the sand and not even attempt to fight back against Big Tech.

this is our life. this is our time. this is me acknowledging that I am sick and tired of someone else controlling what I do with it, especially if that control is implicit. next time when you’re scrolling on instagram or pinterest and ‘wishing your life looked like theirs,’ think about what you’re wishing for. are the photos you’re comparing yourself against of people scrolling on their phones?

snippets of a 'dream life,' via pinterest

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I have so much more to say about this topic, including:

• my friend who has made her iphone a ‘dumb phone’

• my thoughts and feelings about content creation post dopamine break up

• why 3.5 hours of screen time still feels like too much

• routines and habits I’ve adopted for a slower life

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