7 Tips to Take Control of Your Smartphone Before It Takes Control of You

By the time you’ve read this article, you may have felt the pull to check your smartphone—more than once. Americans are inexorably tethered to the little black screens in our pockets even though we know they can bring us more harm than good. So how do we keep our smartphone use in check?

In 2018, a survey found that Americans check their phones 52 times per day. If that sounds low, a different survey from 2022 found respondents checked their devices a whopping 344 times a day. Fortunately, new research is suggesting simple upgrades in our tech hygiene that can help us curb our smartphone habit.

A Problem In All Our Pockets A 2017 review of studies examining links between smartphone use and mental health, published in the Journal of Affective Disorders, found that depression severity and anxiety were associated with “problematic smartphone use.”

Studies show that excessive screen usage may also be setting up toddlers for difficulty later in life. As published in the Journal of Pediatrics in 2022, researchers surveyed 352 parents of 2-year-old toddlers to determine the role of diet and lifestyle on executive function.

They asked parents to determine their child’s ability to organize thoughts, regulate emotions and impulses, recall information, and shift attention between various tasks. They found that toddlers that used screens for less than 60 minutes a day had “significantly greater” ability to “control their own cognition.”

On top of this, recent literature is showing that smartphones can indeed be addictive. In one study published in Addictive Behaviors in 2020, researchers conducted MRIs on those who self-reported problematic smartphone use. The brain scans found similar patterns of brain activity as those with addictive disorders. They also showed decreased activity in brain regions responsible for cognitive control.

Salience and Smartphones In neuroscience, salience is the property by which something stands out. In economics, salience is our predisposition to prioritize goods and information that we deem as noteworthy or more relevant over other goods and information.

Jeff Cain, associate professor of Pharmacy Practice and Science at the University of Kentucky, has been focusing on salience as an aspect of our compulsive phone usage. Cain told The Epoch Times that he began tracking society’s confrontation with “digital afflictions” since Facebook first gained a foothold on college campuses. Since then, he’s been examining how we can improve our relationship with technology, most recently focusing on mental health and the use of social media and smartphones.

Cain is the co-author of a study published in the American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education in 2022 that sought to determine the effectiveness of applying the salience principle of economics to reduce pharmacy students’ attraction to their smartphones.

“With smartphones and social media, some of the salience is color. Some of it is where you have things on your screen. So, if you turn it on and you have Instagram or Twitter or Facebook on your home screen, it’s right there in your face,” said Cain.

The study looked at how much University of Kentucky students would use their smartphones after reducing its salience by changing their display to grayscale; disabling social media notifications; removing social media application icons from their home screens; and moving their phones away from their beds before sleeping.

Fifty-two percent reported a decrease in overall smartphone use. Grayscale made smartphones more boring and curbed attraction by 34 percent. About 31 percent of students said they used social media less. Twenty percent reported they found it easier to fall asleep or had better quality sleep. Fifteen percent said they experienced less stress, anxiety, or depression.

But, 12 percent noted they experienced heightened concerns of missing communications, popularly described as FOMO (fear of missing out).

After the challenge, Cain kept his own phone on grayscale permanently.

“When you get that little bit of boredom, you’re in line, or you’re stuck in traffic, and you pull it out and it’s gray, looking at it doesn’t do anything for you. And it really does make it … not exciting, so you just put it away.”

Beyond Willpower Cain is an avid runner, particularly wilderness trails, ultramarathons, and obstacle courses. He’s run in the 50K Barkley Fall Classic; traveled to Nicaragua to race by a volcano; and has done a rim-to-rim-to-rim run at the Grand Canyon. He’s no stranger to grit and willpower. Even so, he sees excessive smartphone use as more of a question of retooling one’s environment rather than exerting sheer will. In previous years, he said, he would have emphasized the role of willpower. Not anymore.

“A lot of that research shows willpower can only take you so far. It actually depletes over time. The more you have to use willpower, at some point in time, you break.”

Many of the studies on smartphone use are based on self-reporting, but there is also a growing body of research looking at more objective criteria. In one study published in Computational Intelligence and Neuroscience in 2016, researchers measured brainwaves of participants who were divided into two groups based on pre-experiment questionnaires: one as “at risk” for smartphone addiction, and the other was determined as “non-risk.”

Wearing electrode caps, both groups were asked to perform cognitive challenges and were exposed to smartphone push notifications during the experiments. Both groups showed “sensitive reactions” to the notifications. But, the at-risk group showed a higher sensitivity to notifications. And, they showed impaired concentration and cognitive performance after the notification had passed, something not seen in the non-risk group.

How to Keep Your Smartphone Use In Check Unlike many other vices, smartphones are a necessary tool for modern life. Fortunately, experiential research and empirical findings can help us grapple with this inescapable temptation. Try the following strategies to help manage your own smartphone use.

Use Grayscale Mode Colors are appealing to the eye. Technology designers know that, and they pick colors to keep you hooked, like red notification bubbles or the cornucopia of color readily available on Instagram. Turn on grayscale for a decidedly more boring experience. Many phones will even allow you to automatically specify when to turn grayscale mode on and off. Try having your phone switch to grayscale at least an hour before bedtime.

Don’t Sleep Next To Your Phone Scrolling in bed is a guilty pleasure many indulge in but it can reduce both sleep quality and duration. Leaving your phone in another room can prevent this habit and also keep you from using your phone immediately upon waking. Instead of using your smartphone, try reading before bed.

Turn Off Notifications The pings, vibrations, and pop-ups associated with notifications are unceasing by default—but you can turn them off, or at least minimize them. You can disable notifications by using “Do Not Disturb” mode (this usually also turns off call and text notifications also). You can also switch them off for specific apps in your phone’s settings, as well as specifying what kind of notifications you receive in an individual app’s settings.

Remove Social Media Apps From Your Home Screen Social media apps are a huge driver of smartphone use. Adding some friction to access them can help curb use and keep social media off our minds. This also keeps the red notification badges out of sight.

Turn Your Phone Over, Or Stash It Out of Sight For a simpler, no-frills approach, turning your phone over is an easy way to temporarily close off the digital world to focus on work or quality time with loved ones. Switching it to silent mode complements this technique well and keeps you immersed in the moment at hand.

Use the Timer on Your Phone to Concentrate on Another Task If you’re fully engaged in another task, you won’t be using your smartphone. Set a timer on your phone with your preferred focus duration and set it aside. Your phone will be occupied while the timer app is in use, and you’ll be more incentivized to stay productive.

Practice Mindfulness The next time you go to pick up your phone out of boredom or some other feeling, pause to tune into what you are sensing in your body and what is compelling your habitual phone use. When we pause to become more aware of the present moment and of our mind itself, there is a corresponding awareness of how easily we can become distracted, as well as the source of that distraction.

Whether it’s through prayer, meditation, or secular practice, a greater level of mindfulness will naturally dissuade us from becoming too consumed by our technology usage.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. Epoch Health welcomes professional discussion and friendly debate. To submit an opinion piece, please follow these guidelines and submit through our form here.