Phone Rules

trying & mostly failing to create a healthy relationship with my phone

Feb 11, 2024

A few years ago, I wrote an essay for Romper about my relationship with my phone. Since then, I’ve continued to reflect on the idea at the heart of that essay: “The truth is that I want to enjoy the benefits of my phone without the costs swallowing me whole.”

No matter what I’ve tried, I cannot seem to consistently maintain a healthy relationship with my phone. Maybe you struggle with this, too?

The summer before last, I read Catherine Price’s book, How to Break Up With Your Phone. I read it right after I submitted my final grades, the moment when the vastness of summer was unfolding before me. A time when my mind and self could stretch out and be present again in a new way.

I recommend this book. Catherine Price also has a great substack HERE.

I appreciated Price’s book, which shares research about the many nefarious ways our phones are designed to addict us, written in accessible, non-guilt-inducing language. I also worked through Price’s “Break-Up Process” in the second half of the book, which includes reflective journaling over a 30-day period to help you discern what your actual relationship with your phone is and ideally, create a new one.

I deleted social media apps from my phone and resolved to check them only on my desktop. I took to heart Price’s advice to create “speed bumps” around apps that suck me into my phone in a trance state and ultimately feed my anxiety (like my email app). I loved how Price encourages readers to bring mindfulness to their phone use—to question how particular phone habits make us feel in our bodies, minds, etc.

When I didn’t have any social media or email apps on my phone, I gave myself a smug pat on the back and reveled in how quiet my brain felt. How calm. It was like someone turned off a persistent buzzing sound that had been going steady in the background. I felt a palpable sense that another way was possible.

a sign I made for my desktop monitor that Kai “enhanced” with Among Us characters :)

Then, like I detailed in my Romper essay, “one by one, each app came back like a lost cat mewling for milk.” I put the apps back on for one reason or another along with a vague, well-meaning resolution to “do it better this time.” But as I’ve learned more about habit formation over the past few months reading Judson Brewer’s Unwinding Anxiety and James Clear’s Atomic Habits, I’ve realized that I need to be more intentional about breaking my bad habits and forming healthier ones.

BUT I don’t want to be puritanical about it. I don’t want to be self-centered about it. I don’t want to fall into the techno-efficiency trap of using whatever time I can wrest from the attention economy to fill more hours of the day with more work. My deeply embedded workaholism is something that I’m also trying to question and let go of as I try to find a way to be more alive in my actual life.

I want to change my phone habits so that I can be more present and do more good work in the actual world. These days, I try and fail to muddle through a generally ok but not optimal way of using my phone to numb myself periodically, then not beating myself up about it. but just thinking, man, I wish I’d gone for a walk instead. Or read my book, or called a good friend with my phone rather than reading about that distant acquaintances’ publications.

Why keep trying when it feels so impossible, and there are more important things to worry about?

Jenny Odell writes in How to Do Nothing, “It’s not just that living in a constant state of distraction is unpleasant, or that a life without willful thought and action is an impoverished one. If it’s true that collective agency both mirrors and relies on the individual capacity to ‘pay attention,’ then in a time that demands action, distraction appears to be (at the level of the collective) a life-and-death matter” (81).

I agree deeply with Odell here. Our communities—both micro and macro—need us. We need us. Our kids need us. We need to be able to think and act and model for them how to pay attention to what matters.

Both of my kids already exhibit addictive love for their devices, which we let them play on for a limited time most days. The question of when they’ll get their own phone is something we can still put off for now (they’re eight and almost ten). In a few years, we’ll get them their own phones.

How can I help them learn to develop a healthy relationship with their device when I can’t do it myself?

In our last “Do Nothing” thread, Jessica mentioned using the Screen Zen app. I tried it over the last week and I like it a lot (thanks, Jessica!). But it also annoys me because it forces me to delay my dopamine hit and stare my addiction in the face. It places speed bumps around certain apps, so that you can be mindful. So that you can ask yourself while you’re waiting the five seconds for Instagram to actually open, “Do I really need to look at this right now?” And, maybe decide not to open it. Out of 15 times opening Instagram, I’ve forgone it 2 times.

I’ve also tried different habit tracking systems over the past year or so, something that James Clear is a fan of in his book Atomic Habits, with varying levels of effectiveness. Currently, I have a habit titled “Phone Rules” in my Done app where I track how well I’m following my phone rules each day. It doesn’t work. But I want it to.

I’m trying to inhabit that space between being real with myself about what my medicines and my poisons are—social media and email are some of my most toxic poisons—while also acknowledging that they are important and even medicines at times. I’m trying to hold myself accountable, while also being compassionate with myself, knowing that sometimes that choice to scroll Insta means I’ll see a message from a friend that makes me laugh so hard I cry and actually helps me reset—even if I also get pulled into posts that make me wallow in the stew of numbness from holding all that context-less content in my head at once (current events + new baby + grief post + sweater advertisement + actual info about an event for my kids + call for writing submissions, etc etc etc).

Then there’s moments where I really do need to use my phone as a tool just like I’d use a peeler to peel potatoes. Just this morning, If I hadn’t had my phone with me to capture a video of this roller skating trick by my daughter, would I have remembered it less? Probably! I’m glad I got it. I might go back and watch this on a tough day and be glad I did.

At the same time, maybe it would have been better for me not to record it and instead just BE there watching and cheering without my device between us.

smiling afterglow of Lulu’s newest roller skating trick

What is the way forward?

It’s legitimately hard to pause and make a choice for my health when everybody needs something and I’m already late to a meeting (a point that attention scholar Gloria Mark makes beautifully in this interview). I often don’t have the mental time or energy to be mindful about it.

Where I’ve landed is setting rules for myself that I try to reflect on every few weeks or so.

Here are my current imperfect, aspirational Phone Rules:

Social media apps off phone—check on browser (download again to share stuff, then delete again—annoying but effective when I do it)
Stick to email screen time limit on phone (have never achieved this, not once)
Read or Duolingo in bathroom (mixed results)
Leave phone away from me often (struggle with this, pretty much always in my pocket)
Check email 3-4 x a day (tough but I do this some days & love it)
Wait to check email after morning rituals, or as late as I can in the morning (journal, meditate) (best rule there is if you can do it and one I mostly do)
Close email tab when not checking (super helpful when I do it)

You may be thinking, “Whoa, that’s some serious type-A business. Not for me.” But hear me out: if we don’t reflect on what we want and name it, when we’re going up against the Attention Economy Machine, there’s no way in hell that we’re gonna win even the tiniest victory. There’s no way we’re going to keep our spacious, creative, brilliant minds and hearts.

Some of these rules are still totally aspirational. But some have been critical to my being a healthier human being, and that makes me want to keep fighting the good fight.

It was a game changer for me to realize that mornings are when my best brain time and energy levels are, and not to squander that with email (unless I’m on a deadline). If I use my early morning time for email, I get into small mind mode and can’t ever get back to my larger creative mind that day.

I keep coming back to Herman Melville’s character, Bartleby the Scrivener, who is a kind of talisman for Odell, as he answers in response to requests, “I would prefer not to.”

Bartleby’s response seems to be informed by mindfulness. It’s not an angry knee-jerk response. It’s a clear, steady nope. I’ll do it my own way, thanks.

So, I don’t really have advice for you—just reports from the field. I hope something here will connect with you and help you reflect on your own relationship with your phone, and what you want it to be.

I would love to know your rules and practices with your phone. What helps you stay grounded? What has really worked for you?

Be Where You Are

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