My journey in reducing my screen time

Recently I was feeling overwhelmed by social media and my own personal life not being exactly perfect.

The current issue I have is that there are way too many things to work on in a very limited time buffer. I think of myself as a person who takes charge and does what he has to do, however even I have my limits, which, when stepped over, cause me to procrastinate a lot.

Anyway, I found that the biggest issue was my usage of social media. So I decided I had to lower the time I spend on social media somehow.

Interestingly enough, it happened by itself in a really peculiar way.

The main culprits

The main issue for me was scrolling on Instagram and Youtube, though Youtube is better, since there's a lot of educational content I watch over there.

Video games

I mostly didn't play video games from the second half of 2022 to the second half of 2024. In December 2024 I started playing some games again and I found out that they were a sufficient distraction to lower my Instagram and Youtube usage.

So I decided to try lowering my social media usage again, but using a different method.

However, this does not mean that video games are the solution. They are still a big waste of time and you should avoid playing them, especially the multiplayer ones 😬

Previous attempts

Previously, I tried setting restrictive limits on these applications with reminders and interrupts, however as the scroll went on I noticed that I tended to ignore these interrupts and they just became part of the scrolling session.

What I changed

Setting application limits

Instead of limiting my social media usage to 1 hour a day, I decided to start tracking my general usage of social media day by day and trying to go lower from there.

For example, in March, I had a day where I was on Instagram for 5 hours, so I decided to restrict my usage to 4 hours. When I went 3 days 30 minutes below the limit I decreased the time I could spend on the app by 30 minutes.

This way, I managed to get my Instagram usage limit to a respectable 1.5 hours a day, which is just enough to chat with friends.

I also did the same for my general phone usage, though I just set a screentime goal, instead of a limit. This way I was not as hard on myself and I still managed to reduce my daily phone usage from 5.5 hours to 3.5 hours a day.

The new digital wellbeing update: a gamechanger

Samsung dropped a new update to their digital wellbeing application which was crucial in limiting my usage of both Instagram and my phone in general.

Specifically, the remaining time you can use an app for is now noted in the application switcher:

Additionally, there is a nice monthly overview on your screentime goal:

The iPad: reorganising my life and redirecting my phone usage

In March I got an iPad Mini which I decided to buy after starting work on an app for graphic desiners.

I also decided to start using it as a companion device to reorganise my life. The idea was that I don't use any other Apple product, apart from my Macbook, so doing tasks in the Apple Ecosystem would direct me away from my phone, where most of the distracting apps lay.

I decided to do a couple of things when setting up my iPad:

I started journaling daily - made taking decisions easier and reduced my decision anxiety, even if I consider myself a pretty laid back person in terms of decisionmaking
Created a habit tracker - helped me be more accountable in forming and following through on good habits
Journaling and tracking habits had to done in Apple Notes - discouraged me from using my computer or phone to write the notes. Also, using only the Apple Pencil made it feel more like my own notebook instead of just a notes application with cloud synchronisation
Installed Youtube, but not Instagram - redirected my phone usage to Youtube which is still scrolling, but it actually provides value to my life

Turns out that dong any of the tasks I listed above by themselves will not be able to make you lower your screentime. It might be reduced for a couple of days, but once you try clicking on the "15 more minutes" button more than 2 times a day, you are highly likely to give up on your screentime reduction goal entirely.

Instead, I tried redirecting my social media screen time to platforms or devices where I couldn't enter an endless scroll as easily as I could on Instagram. Specifically, since I didn't have Instagram installed on my tablet, I could only scroll on my computer or on my phone, but given that web version of Instagram is a pile of garbage that barely works, this only leaves my phone.

The results

After 2 months of trying this alternative way of using my devices I can confidently say that I feel less anxious and calmer. I am also less tired than I was before.

Interestingly, even though I moved most of my content consumption to the iPad where I mostly watch Youtube, I noticed that my general usage of Youtube tended to be lower over time when analising the data from Apple's application usage statisticts.

Not only did I manage to reduce the portion of my screen time I spent on Instagram, but I also seemed to reduce my Youtube screen time, all while still keeping in touch with friends and having a generally fine social life.

This was mainly because I also downloaded an idle game on my iPad, which meant that when I opened the iPad I got push notifications that a building was finished and I directly clicked on them, instead of being sent to the home screen and selecting Youtube. Since there is not much to do in the idle game I just tended to put the iPad away after a minute.

Further improvements

I want to try living in silence more. Specifically, I want to stop listening to music during the day. Music can be great but it seems to affect my mood and internal monologue in unpredictable ways sometimes.

Other tips

Turn off all non-essential notifications

Before 2020 I used to have anxiety around my phone, since I was receiving notifications from every app and my phone was constantly buzzing inside my pocket.

Some time in 2020, I decided to turn off my non-essential notifications completely. Now I only get notifications for SMS messages, phone calls, emails and the occasional message on Discord.

Talking about Discord - I turned off notifications there too, though I kept them for DMs, since I generally don't get a lot of texts there anyway.

Generally, the less pings you get, the better. Also, make sure to turn off sound notifications for every notification type and only put highly essential notifications like SMS or calls on vibration. There is no need to read an email 1 minute after it hit your inbox.

Unsubscribe from spam and groups you no longer participate in

A thing I started doing in 2024 was starting to unsubscribe from all promotional emails, deleting accounts I did not use and leaving large discord groups where I never posted a single message.

Ever since I did that, I started getting less pings and less notification anxiety, even if my notification anxiety was already low with notifications turned off.

Unsubscribing from newsletters and deleting unused accounts is also beneficial because it exposes you to less cyber attacks and possible account takeovers.

Conclusion

In conclusion, over this short experiment I found out that combining different ways to redirect my usage of Instagram and my phone to other devices and services where I was not as distracted managed to be a good way to stop the cycle of endless scrolling that was plaguing my life for a while.

There are still places where I can improve on, such as trying to be outside more or trying to listen to music less, but I think that the result of this experiment has been a great success in my eyes.

I will try creating followup posts on my entire journey.