I Am Addicted to My Smartphone

I am addicted to my smartphone. I spend hours on it every day—more than four hours on average, to be precise. In my opinion, this is way too much. That’s why I decided to change this habit. In this article, I want to share with you how I recognized my addiction, why I think it’s a problem, and what I want to do about it. So let’s dive in.

How I Recognized My Addiction

I recognized my addiction years ago. I always knew that I spent a lot of time on my smartphone. I mean, we all do, right? I am quite sure that four hours a day is not even that much compared to some other people. But still, I think it’s too much for myself. Before I start to dig a little deeper, I want to emphasize that I don’t judge anyone for spending a lot of time on their smartphone. I think it’s a pure personal decision, and for sure, smartphones have a lot of benefits. But for me personally, I decided that four hours a day is too much.

I recognized this in the last few years and I already had some attempts to reduce my usage, but I never really succeeded in the long term. It went quite well for a few weeks where I had around 1-2 hours of usage per day, but then I fell back into my old behavior. But this time, I want to change it for good.

Why I Think It’s a Problem

I think my extensive smartphone usage is a problem for several reasons. First of all, most of the time I spend on my smartphone, I don’t do anything useful. I just scroll through social media or watch some short-form content. I don’t think that this is a good use of my time. Most of the short-form content I consume is not valuable at all. I don’t learn anything from it and, to be honest, it’s not even entertaining most of the time. I think I could use my time much better. Many times I catch myself just wanting to check my phone for a reason but ending up scrolling through some apps ten minutes later. There are so many things that I want to do in my free time like reading books, learning new programming languages, building some personal websites, doing sports, and of course spending time with my wife. Every day I try to do some of these things, but most of the time I end up with bad feelings because I didn’t manage to do them. Then, I check my time usage on the smartphone and see another 4 hours clocked in. I think this is a problem.

Another reason why it’s a problem is that it’s not good for my mental health. There are so many different characters out there on social media that it happens quite often that I disagree with someone. Depending on the topic, this makes me stressed sometimes, which results in a bad mood. This bad mood I carry over to work or my personal life, impacting my relationships with real people which I care about.

The most important reason is that I think I don’t live in the moment and appreciate the small things in life when I am using my smartphone too frequently. Every time I see something nice or beautiful, I think about sharing it with my friends via my smartphone instead of just admiring it in real life. Furthermore, every time I am waiting for something, I take out my smartphone and start scrolling instead of interacting with my surroundings. I think this is a problem and I want to change it. The most critical situations are when I am spending time with my wife. It’s not fair for her when I am constantly getting distracted by my smartphone while we try to have a nice conversation, eat dinner together, or watch a movie. For the health of our relationship, I think it’s important for me to change this habit.

What I Want to Do About It

As I said, I already had some attempts to reduce my smartphone usage in the past. But this time, I want to change it for good. What worked best for me in the past was to delete most social media apps from my smartphone. On top of that, I will change the color of my smartphone screen to black and white. It’s incredible how much less appealing it is to use the smartphone when you don’t see all the colorful icons, but instead just a bunch of grey symbols. I will also try to use the smartphone only for specific tasks like navigation and reading books when I don’t have a Kindle or a book with me.

Furthermore, I need something to replace the time I spend on my smartphone for the first weeks. I think it’s important to have some kind of substitution already in place every time I normally would grab my smartphone. Having this substitution in place, I hope I don’t even have the urge to grab the smartphone. I also want to ban my smartphone from the bedroom. Instead, I want to read a book before I go to sleep. This will help me to fall asleep faster and have a better, more restful sleep.

But Why Am I Sharing This With You?

I am sharing this with you for two reasons. First of all, I want to put myself under pressure to really change it this time. By writing a blog article about it, I have to change it. Otherwise, I would look like a fool. So over the course of the next months, I will keep you updated on how I am doing with my smartphone usage. My goal is to reduce it to less than one hour per day. Secondly, I think that many people have the same problem and it’s important to talk about it. It is important to recognize when you have a problem and to take action. We just have one life and we should try to live it to the fullest. Time is running constantly and you never know how much you exactly have left. So it’s important to use it wisely—for good things that make you, and in the best case, also others, happy. And I have the feeling that scrolling constantly on your smartphone is sometimes not the best use of this limited time we have.