5 Ways to stop your phone addiction, according to research

Some might say that they’re not addicted to technology — they just enjoy it. But those same people probably say things like, “I wish I had more time to do the things I love.” As Thoreau once said, “The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”

Well, people average 3 hours a day on their phones. In the pre-smartphone era that number was just 18 minutes. And what happens when you ask young adults if they’d rather have a broken bone or a broken phone?

Hear what Adam Alter, a professor of marketing at NYU has to say concerning a research to that effect:

There’s a study that was done asking people, mainly young adults, to make a decision: if you had to break a bone or break your phone what would you prefer?

Forty-six percent of people would prefer to have a broken bone than a broken phone.

 

But even for the fifty-four percent of people who say they’d prefer to have a broken phone, it wasn’t a snap decision. They agonized over it.

And if you have kids, this issue is even more serious. Children don’t learn empathy and emotional intelligence from screens. And Adam says kids now spend 20% less time playing face-to-face. Guess where that time went? Exactly.

No doubt, Steve Jobs changed the world with the iPad. But what most people don’t know is he wouldn’t let his children use one. As he told the New York Times in 2010, “We limit how much technology our kids use in the home.”

 

 

Are We Really Phone Junkies?

Phones aren’t drugs. So why do we get addicted? Because addiction is not about pleasure. Addiction is about soothing psychological distress. It’s using something to cope with a problem in life.

According to Adam:

You only develop an addiction when there is some psychological motive that hasn’t been fulfilled for you: loneliness, that you’ve been bullied, or you can’t make good things happen in your life. It doesn’t actually matter what you use to soothe that addiction, whether it’s playing a particular game that lulls you into a distracted state or whether it’s taking a drug. In terms of soothing those psychological ills, behavior and substance addictions are very, very similar.

 

We live in an age of anxiety. And phones can soothe that anxiety. But they can also add to that anxiety. Some researchers refer to smartphones as “adult pacifiers.” We get cranky, bored, or distressed and the pacifier soothes us.

 

Okay, so what do we do about it?

Well, Adam has a few tips from psychology we can use to get a handle on things…

1) “Don’t” Say “Can’t”

When you make the commitment to change, tell yourself, “I don’t check my phone more than once an hour” as opposed to, “I can’t check my phone more than once an hour.” Here’s Adam:

“Don’t” is a declarative statement about what kind of a person you are. When you say you “don’t” do something you give yourself the power to have made the decision not to do that thing. When you say “can’t” it feels as though some external force is telling you you shouldn’t be doing this thing. The way human motivation works and the way human decision making works is that we do much better when it’s something that feels like it arises within us. We don’t like being told what we can and can’t do.

Sound trivial? It’s not. Adam cites a study of women trying to meet an exercise goal. The ones who told themselves, “I can’t miss a workout” were only successful 10% of the time. Those who said, “I don’t miss workouts” were 80% likely to follow through.

 

 

2) Proximity Is Destiny

When you don’t absolutely have to have your phone by your side, put it somewhere you can’t easily reach it. Across the room is a good option. (France may be a better option but let’s keep it simple for now.) Here’s Adam:

You can basically design the environment that you’re in to maximize your own well-being. There are two main ways to do this: one of them is to ensure that temptation is far away. So if there’s something that you keep doing obsessively, make sure that it’s not in your environment and you’re less likely to do it. That’s a much more effective way of preventing yourself from using it than say keeping it nearby but trying to just suppress the desire to use it. 

And when you need it nearby, turn off all non-essential notifications.

Listen to Adam:

Turn off the “ding” sound when you get a text message so that instead of your phone saying, “Hey, check me now,” you decide when it’s time to check. You’re removing the control from the phone and you’re bringing it back to yourself. You can also take the apps that are most addictive for you, and bury them in a folder on the fourth page.

 

3) Use A “Stopping Rule”

Ever said you’re going to “just check your phone real quick” — and then an hour goes by? (No, you did not discover time travel.)

You check email, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram… And by the time you’ve done all that, it’s time to check email, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram again. You may call this your “happy place.” Researchers call it a “ludic loop.” It’s what slot machines are designed to produce. This is what Adam has got to say:

The “ludic loop” is this idea that when you’re engaged in an addictive experience, like playing slot machines, you get into this lulled state of tranquility where you just keep doing the thing over and over again. It just becomes the comfortable state for you. You don’t stop until you’re shaken out of that state by something.

That’s your “stopping rule.” Again, frame it with “I don’t.” Here’s Adam:

It’s a rule that says at this point it’s time for me to stop. It breaks the reverie and makes you think of something else; it gets you outside of the space you’ve been in. The best thing to do is to use a declarative statement like, “I don’t watch more than two episodes of a show in a row, that’s just not who I am.”
Your phone has email, texting, Facebook and Instagram. You know what else it has? A countdown timer. Maybe that should be the first step in your next ludic loop.

So a “stopping rule” can prevent endless checking. But how do you break this habit for good? You don’t…

 

4) You Don’t Break Habits. You Replace Them.

Proximity is destiny, right? When you sit on the couch, make sure the phone is far away and a book is within reach. So now you’re not just gritting your teeth trying to not check your phone. You’re substituting a good habit for the bad one. When you want to check your phone, you grab a book instead. Here’s Adam:

What you want to do is you want to find a behavior that is a stand-in for the behavior that you don’t want to be doing. You replace the bad g that you shouldn’t be doing with something good that you should be doing.
I know, you’re not always at home with a book. Doesn’t matter. Every time I’m done checking Instagram I delete it. I have to download it to check it again.

 

5) Dr. Jekyll, Prepare For Mr. Hyde

You’ve seen some version of this movie: the main character knows he’s going to turn into a werewolf after nightfall so he barricades the door and chains himself in the basement. This way, when he transforms into the monster, it won’t be able to harm anyone. (Yes, you’re the hero and the monster in this story.)

By making smart decisions in anticipation of a problem, you make sure that future-you doesn’t do anything stupid like addictively checking your phone (or mauling some hitchhikers.) Here’s Adam:

It’s very, very hard to do the right thing today. What you want to u is to basically ensure that you push that person, that future self, to do the right thing.

 

Going over to a friend’s house for dinner and know you’re going to be tempted to rudely check your phone at the table? Leave your phone in your coat knowing future-you will be too lazy to go to the closet every five minutes.

 

Summary of the whole thing

Here’s how to stop checking your phone:

“Don’t” say “Can’t”: You can always check your phone. But decide to be the kind of person who doesn’t.

Proximity is destiny: Put your phone across the room and laziness becomes a superpower.

Use a “stopping rule”: Leaving the house with your phone at 5% battery is extreme… but it’ll work.

You don’t break habits. You replace them: Good apps up front. Evil apps must be downloaded.

Dr. Jekyll, prepare for Mr. Hyde: Give your phone to a friend before you drink so the werewolf can’t drunk-text exes.

Addictions start when there’s a problem in your life you’re struggling to cope with, right? So checking your phone way too much can be the canary in your coal mine.

So if you’re reading this on your phone, text or email that person. Let them know you care. Set a time to see them.

And then put the phone away.

 

An extended version of this article originally appeared on On Barking Up The Wrong Tree