Friend or foe? How our phones can affect our well-being

Smartphones were introduced in the late 2000s and became prevalent by mid-2010s. We are now nearly 20 years into this new reality and many of us are struggling with this piece of tech that we carry around with us in our pocket. We take it to our weddings (‘we need to take photos with it’), we take it to bed with us (‘I need it for my alarm’) and we watch TV with it (‘just for the advert breaks’). We use it for our social connections, for our game playing, for our news consumption, for our cameras, for our music and radio, for our reading… Our phones are our BFFs, mothers, wives and lovers all wrapped into one. 

But for many of us, our phones do not give us joy. We ‘need’ them but have a love hate relationship with them. And partly that is because we have this disconcerting sense that there is a power imbalance here. If they’re there just to make our lives easier, why do we feel so guilty when we spend so much time on them? Why do we not feel better when we’re on them, idly scrolling Instagram? Why do we feel that they run the show and not us?

Our relationships with our phones

I asked some teenage children to tell me about their relationship with their phones. This is what I heard:

“I like having my phone next to me in bed or else I can’t sleep” or “Not having my phone by me makes me anxious” or “I find I spend ages on it and then come off and can’t remember what I went on it for” or “I scroll on TikTok for half an hour and then just feel awful” or “It doesn’t even make me feel good, I don’t know why I do it”.

I recently discovered I was spending a lot more time on Twitter and Instagram. I found that my concentration levels had dropped dramatically. I could be reading a good book and reach for my phone mid chapter for no apparent reason. And yet I’ve only been using them for about six months, and have only had a smartphone for 10 years. Which is only a quarter of my life.

Our children have had smartphones in their lives for at least half their lives and often much more. If my brain can be so affected in six months of using these apps, a brain that’s had four decades to grow and evolve without a smartphone, what effect must they be having on young, developing brains? What effect are they having on your brain?

Much of our online content is fragmented. It is content delivered in small, manageable chunks and the most recent example of this is reels, which have become hugely popular as very short video presentations of anything from news stories, celebrity gossip or self-help advice. But reels present a whole new way of interacting with content, by placing short snippets of information consecutively with little to no relational value.

Kierkegaard said (back in the 19th century) that we'd have this 'magic speaking tube' whereby all our events would be conflated and presented next to each other, with no sense of priority or prominence or inherent value. So you'd have someone giving you a recipe and then someone announcing someone's death and then someone giving you a piece of society gossip. All presented as if they have the same inherent worth as demands on your time and attention. He was very prescient. Our modern social media and even news outlets present tiny fragments of information in just this way. And reels are just the most recent phenomenon. And yet these snippets of information have an impact on us. They fragment our attention and also fragment our sense of what matters. 

Any app which presents you with tiny morsels of information and then moves on very quickly to something else, whether it's the BBC news site, the Daily Mail, Facebook or Twitter, affects your ability to concentrate whilst providing the reward centres in our brain with tiny dopamine hits that are almost impossible to replicate any other way. How many times have you been doing something and just idly picked up your phone to ‘check it’? Or been sitting reading or watching TV or even talking to someone and seen your phone and felt an urge to pick it up? Our phone apps are designed to draw us in and keep us scrolling. They give us a hit that we struggle to get anywhere else. And so we carry on, and the more we do it, the more we want. 

Does this sound familiar? 

Whether it is YouTube recommending video after video that ‘you may like’ to keep you watching, or the BBC presenting short snippets of information on Gaza and celebrities and football on the same screen or Twitter showing you this video, that photo, this post and on and on… we are living in a virtual and highly fragmented world. 

Restoring balance

So what can we do to restore some balance in a world where that is designed around our phones?

Here are seven actionable steps you can take to regain control over your phone use:

1. Get real about your phone use – analyse what you spend your time on and how much time you spend. Think about how you feel when you come off your phone. And whether it’s a positive influence in your life. We tell ourselves a lot of comforting myths about our phone use. The first step is to get solid data on how much actual time you spend on different apps and how you feel about this in real time.
2. Consider putting some brakes on – set timers on your apps (all phones have this feature built into them) or remove shortcuts for the most problematic ones and hide them away in a folder marked “You really sure about this??” A great first step here is to leave your phone charging in a different room at night so you don’t have it next to your bed. Think of it as an excuse to buy a new funky alarm clock.
3. Go analogue – if you use your phone for games, try to shift them offline. If you use your phone for news, listen to the radio and take up a creative pastime. If you use your phone for social connection, move it to WhatsApp and not Messenger, for example. If you use your phone for idle scrolling, ask yourself what it’s giving you. If it’s ‘downtime’ or relaxation, what other things could you do with your time. 
4. Make it less appealing – consider using grayscale (again, most modern phones have this option built in) especially after 7pm, put your phone out of the way, or keep it turned off, so you have to go to a bit of work to look at it, keep your replacement activity close to hand (swap your phone for a book which is kept by you and carried around as you would have your phone). 
5. Healthy habits – set goals for yourself and have rewards planned (offline ones!) for when you hit them. If you have timers on your apps, don’t just ‘snooze’ these but instead use these as a prompt to ask yourself: do I want to continue on this app or do I want to choose to do something else? You may like to have a short list of offline activities that leave you feeling joyous and grounded, and ask yourself if you’d rather do one of these instead. Giving the brain conscious choices is a lot more empowering than just obeying the timer.
6. Go public - tell your family and friends you’ll be offline for x time and not to expect a message, and engage them in conversation about this topic. They may well be having the same issues which can be very validating. Consider publicly stating that you’re choosing to spend less time on certain apps within the apps themselves. It can feel very empowering to post an Insta message saying you will be mindfully limiting your Insta use. Plus, you may well discover that other people are also struggling and you can then provide offline accountability.
7. Mindful use – there’s no need to go cold turkey. Allow yourself some time every day, but make sure it is boundaried. For example, going on your time restricted apps with your morning coffee, reading the news after lunch, playing your game for 20 minutes before bed. Choose a time and segment that works for you and then mindfully engage with your phone. 

Phone use is all about being empowered and making sure you have control and not the other way around. If you feel your phone is holding you hostage or even that you’re addicted to it, you’re not alone. And it’s not hopeless. Try these simple steps to take back your sense of control and enjoyment in life.