Last week, Rhik realised how much trouble he was in by journaling his impulses to be on his phone. This week, he takes a radical step.
The digital wellness queen Catherine Price is devastating my sense of self. “How much work would you miss if you weren’t on top of your email every hour?” asks the author of How to Break Up With Your Phone and the coach of the Guardian’s newsletter Reclaim your brain.
Before I can ask if she knows who I am, she asks me the same question. “Who are you, without distraction? Giving up your phone gets existential quickly.” I’m not sure I’m ready to find out. It’s been a hard year, on top of an impossibly hard couple of years.
She switches to some practical tips on how to make my phone less appealing. How would it feel to delete WhatsApp? she asks. I’m not going to do that, I tell her flatly. I sound like a junkie.
She challenges me: could I delete it for the duration of our call? The idea feels like burying myself alive, I say. “I’ll stay with you,” she promises. I go above my nerve. I hard-click the green circle, and uninstall. The line goes dead. I’m talking to no one. The moment is jarring, a terrible silence that rears like death. We’ve been talking on a WhatsApp call, I realize.
An SMS from Catherine pops up.
Uh, maybe reinstall a few minutes more? LOL.
Monday
If I’m serious about phasing out the phone, it needs to look more serious. I start with Price’s tip to grayscale the screen. The effect is drastic. Apps no longer peacock for my attention. Photos on my reel lose all appeal. This color drain could make a decisive difference. After all, dogs only see in blue and yellow, and they don’t waste their days staring at Instagram.
Tuesday
I turn on an app timer, instructing it to turn off WhatsApp, TikTok and X after an hour. I add an app blocker – which, when turned on, will make it impossible to even open the problematic apps.
I try the Space App first, and like that it tracks the number of times I unlock my phone. Picking it up for no good reason is what destroys my focus, as much as actual screen time. But it’s a little polite for me, with its easy-to-override suggestions and handy tips. The Freedom app feels more muscular. When I attempt to open WhatsApp, the app does open, briefly – before buzzing waspily and snapping shut with the words: “Go do great things.”
Wednesday
A glaring problem: I’m not doing great things. I spend time freed up from not going on TikTok taking a quiz to determine whether I am Taylor Swift or Olivia Rodrigo.
I turn off all notifications, except calls.
Thursday
There is someone I’ve become interested in, though. Almond and I met at a party, but our burgeoning flirtation has been largely digital. I can’t feasibly be on my phone less, while continuing to text her gifs of Scooby-Doo every hour. Yet what’s the alternative? Write letters? Send pigeons?
The obvious answer is talk on the phone. But no one does that any more. I always preferred crafting messages, editing out mistakes. In person, I’m as charismatic as Styrofoam. But this month is about change. I bite the bullet. How would Almond feel about the occasional call, instead of texting? I’m worried this is a huge presumption, like asking her to try on my second name for size.
“Great,” she says. “I talk to my friends on the phone every day.” Well, that was easy. Wait, why did she say frie -
Friday
I delete the app formerly known as Twitter for good. One of Price’s admonishments stayed with me: “That firehose of multiple bite-sized pieces of information is fragmenting your attention.” I experience an immediate lift in mood. If ever a website was a low point for humanity, an abomination that should be buried deeper than radioactive fuel rods, with no map to ever reveal its location, X marks the spot.
Saturday
At a low point, I investigate using the app blocker to block the app blocker.
Sunday
A horrifying epiphany: although the phone is black and white, my brain is filling in color. The WhatsApp icon still looks green to me; emojis are yellow and red. Only on Instagram, where my brain can’t auto-predict how pictures should look, do I remember grayscale is on.
There’s a problem with using my phone’s tricks to curb my screen time: the fact is I am still reliant on it, still defaulting all activities through it. I’m still relying on willpower, of which I have none. I find myself too easily overriding screen timers, dismissing my phone’s digital wellness nudges, turning off the app blockers. Eventually, I turn the grayscale off too.
Next week: Rhik makes progress, but with it comes an existential question.
