LANSING, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – As a college student, I theoretically don’t have much time to spend on my smartphone. Key word: Theoretically. Somehow, I still found spare moments for scrolling even while other hobbies and activities started to drop by the wayside.

It’s a common problem, according to data from ExplodingTopics: Nearly half of Americans say they spend 4-5 hours on their smartphones per day. Setting aside 8 hours for sleep, that’s a full quarter of the day spent staring at just one screen, not counting tablets, laptops, televisions, and gaming devices. Three in 4 Gen Zers admit they spend more time on their smartphones than they’d like, and just over half of baby boomers agree.

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Tristan Harris, former owner of a company that was acquired by Google, became a co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, where he works to publicize the harmful effects of misused tech. In a 2018 interview, he told Vox that social media tensions surrounding the 2016 election drew attention to the problems smartphones, social media, and other software and devices can cause for personal wellbeing.

“I think we have to ask where our choice is coming from,” Harris said in the interview. “Imagine seeing a picture of a human being and asking, when this thing called a choice happened, what happened? Did the person take a deep breath and think for five seconds and then they acted … or was there a quick circuit between lizard brain and right back out?”

For many, if we’re honest, it’s lizard brain all the way. Habit drew me to automatically pick up my phone and search for whatever I felt like looking at, even when I hid those apps from my home screen so they were harder to find. And it’s not just me. Sit in any waiting room and you’ll be lucky to see much besides the tops of people’s heads as they stare down at their screens.

After all, we have the world in our hands. Who wouldn’t want to look at it?

But time spent with the phone is often no longer spent at all—it’s wasted on activities the user will have forgotten within five minutes. The same technology that, when properly used, can maintain relationships across states and borders, can equally wreck relationships with those closest to us by dragging our attention away from the things that matter.

“Cell phones can easily become addictive because of an application’s features, the rewarding feeling of using a phone, and the emphasis on getting users’ attention within an app,” wrote Sarah Karnasiewicz in a medically reviewed article on Health. “Nearly every app on your phone has been expertly engineered to produce responses regarding brain chemistry manipulation to elicit addictive behaviors.”

About 40% of Gen Zers, according to the ExplodingTopics dataset, are actively attempting to reduce their screen time. I decided to become one of them. When other strategies failed, I put my smartphone in a drawer and went looking for a new, dumb(er) phone.

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As for many young Americans, getting rid of the phone altogether wasn’t a realistic option. Safety, work, and long-distance friendships all required the minimum features of talking and texting on the go. I had to start by being realistic about what I could and couldn’t live without.

In my case, I needed:

  • A navigation app, preferably Google Maps
  • Spotify
  • A note-taking app
  • A marginally acceptable camera
  • A QWERTY keyboard

This ruled out most of the phones associated with the so-called “digital minimalism” movement (popularized by Cal Newport’s book of the same name), such as the Light Phone II or the Punkt MP02. It also ruled out the true “dumb phones,” a tongue-in-cheek term for traditional flip phones, few of which operate on modern carriers or allow for easy typing.

In the end, I chose the Palm Companion. This 2018 Verizon smartphone, which takes its name from the original Palm Pilot PDAs, is a little larger than my index finger. It has the battery life of a plug-in lamp (almost none) and the same processor that runs my cats’ brains (again, almost none).

I downloaded the apps I needed and disabled those I didn’t. I also installed a screen time tracker to monitor what I was doing with my new device.

The Palm’s limitations made it impossible to fall into endless scrolling. My underpowered smart-ish-phone would freeze after loading just one webpage, and I didn’t even think about downloading Instagram.

These limitations were annoying for practical tasks—for example, opening the Notes app required several seconds of staring at an all-white screen—but they prevented me from using the phone in ways that weren’t worth the wait. And they prompted me to buy a notebook.

Results from the first two weeks of my experiment were encouraging. Daily usage on my Palm rarely exceeded 1 hour. Time was often tracked when I plugged the phone in and walked away, accidentally leaving the screen on.

If that still sounds like a lot, consider this: Just 5% of Americans say they use their phones for less than 1 hour per day.

During the first thirty-odd days of my smartphone detox (which included initial adjustments to my smartphone habits and then its eventual disposal) I read eight books, walked 53 miles, and wrote a book proposal for my fifth novel.

The single most valuable thing I’ve done to revolutionize my own productivity was to lock my smartphone—the world’s most popular productivity tool—in a drawer.

My goal in choosing digital minimalism is not to avoid digital entertainment or the devices that provide it. I love watching needlessly complex action movies, I own a well-used and scuffed Nintendo Switch, I listened to music for hundreds of hours last year, and I log tremendous time on my Kindle—and I doubt any of that will change. I wouldn’t want it to. Rest, deliberately selected and enjoyed, is just as valuable as work. To assume otherwise is a mistake that leads to chronic low-grade burnout.

Nor is my goal to reject the benefits of technology. In many ways, my laptop has replaced my phone as my primary usage device. It works because I hate scrolling with a mouse or a trackpad, so I get my work done and turn off the screen without getting distracted by mindless surfing.

What I hope to get from my dumb(er) phone is the ultimate choice of where I spend my time—whether that’s watching Jason Bourne or reading text messages from my friends or even scrolling Instagram to see what long-distance family are up to these days. Avoiding my smartphone, at least until I break previous habits, has given me back control of how I spend my days.

That’s a benefit no productivity app, social media platform, or digital habit tracker could ever replace.