How to Reduce Screen Time: Tips to Put Your Phone Down

Choose a goal and set a deadline

Book a driving test before you’re ready. Sign up for a marathon before you’ve started training. Invite friends to dinner before you know how to cook. With a deadline looming, your spare time fills with preparation and practice; you can’t afford to scroll. I realized this recently after months of cramming to meet a ridiculous deadline. My screen time has never been lower. Now I look back with horror at how many skills I could have learned over the years, the hours wasted.

– Freya India

Author of the Substack “GIRLS”

Always be charging

Set up a central charging altar and leave your phone there when you get home. When your phone has a designated space, you’re less likely to carry it like a digital pacifier.

– Nir Eyal

Author of “Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life”

Swap out your smartphone

A year ago, I switched to the Wisephone. It has no internet, email, social media or addictive games or apps. But it does have an app store, with a limited menu that includes a camera and other practical apps. Since I can’t access the internet, there is no possibility of getting sucked into searching for or reading something online, or trying to place an Amazon order while I’m with my kids. Instead, I use the internet on my computer intentionally when I need to accomplish a task.

– Clare Morell

Author of “The Tech Exit: A Practical Guide to Freeing Kids and Teens from Smartphones”

Replace scrolling with ‘me time’

When I’m about to reach for TikTok, I give that time to myself instead. I read a poem or a chapter of a novel. I listen to new music or take a walk. I exercise. I stretch. And when I’m about to reach for Facebook or Instagram, instead I call or text one of my friends and ask for a get together. I make sure to say, “I miss you.”

– Sherry Turkle

Professor of the social studies of science and technology, M.I.T.

Try ‘batching’

Rather than checking messages, social media and email all day long, I set two or three specific times when I handle them all at once. I tend to “batch” three times a day — first thing in the morning (15 minutes), right before lunch (20 minutes) and in the afternoon around 4 p.m. (40 minutes).

– Paul Leonardi

Author of the forthcoming book “Digital Exhaustion”

Try a reverse streak

Apps like Forest, Streaks and Offscreen can be used to gamify how long you don’t use your phone. In the Forest app, you plant a tree, and it grows based on how much time you spend away from your phone. Eventually, spending less time on your phone becomes a more ingrained habit. I like this streak-driven approach, because it works in the short term by leveraging gamification while simultaneously building longer-term, sustainable habits.

– Adam Alter

Professor of marketing at the N.Y.U. Stern School of Business

Go phone-free on Saturday or Sunday

Our family sets aside one day each week to separate ourselves physically from our phones. If we get a call, we will hear it ring and can go look and see who it is, in case there’s an emergency. So our cellphones function more like a landline. If we do leave the house, one of us will bring our phone in case of emergency but we keep it in a bag, out of sight. Striving to go phone-free one day a week has helped us be mentally freer from work and the logistics of life to truly rest on the weekends and to be more present with our family

– Clare Morell

Try something new-ish

Do the thing you know you should try but probably haven’t: Get a stand-alone alarm clock and charge your phone out of your bedroom at night. (Too daunting? Just try it for a week.) I am continually amazed by how many people tell me this simple shift has changed their life.

– Catherine Price

Author of the Substack “How to Feel Alive”

Tuck in your phone at night

Get a “sleeping bag” for your phone as a reminder to put it outside of your bedroom.

– Jean Twenge

Author of “10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World”

Use your phone to disconnect

When I need to stay focused on what I’m doing, I set the phone’s timer and keep it in sight. If my attention starts to wander, a quick glance at the countdown helps me power through.

– Lisa Damour

Clinical psychologist

Create a physical barrier

I’ve been prioritizing swimming for my summer workouts since the pool is naturally a phone-free zone.

– Dr. Jason Nagata

Pediatrician and associate professor at the University of California, San Francisco

Scroll like it’s 2006

If your job requires some sort of social media monitoring or engagement, do it 2006-style, on an old-fashioned laptop-based browser.

– Cal Newport

Professor of computer science at Georgetown University and the author of “Slow Productivity”

Delete the ‘slot machine’ apps

Social media and video games apps are designed to hook you. Instead of looking at them on your phone, use a computer instead — one that you don’t carry around with you. Your phone should become like a Swiss Army knife, full of tools that you pull out when you need to get something done.

– Jonathan Haidt

Social psychologist at the Stern School of Business at New York University and author of “The Anxious Generation”

Change your hardware

Smartphone apps are only getting sexier and sexier. It’ll be an endless battle to resist. I’d rather be in perpetual peace by using a dumbphone for my mobile number. I don’t see this as a resignation but a wise acknowledgment of when to walk away from something that is hurting me, whether that be a person or a phone.

– Gabriela Nguyen

Founder of Appstinence, an organization that helps people reimagine life without social media and smartphones

Do something difficult

We often turn to our phones to escape, reward ourselves or relax, but what they actually do is create a constant state of reactivity and arousal. By putting the phone down and doing something that’s a little bit painful, like crunching 10 sit-ups, immersing ourselves in an ice bath or cleaning out a long-neglected closet, we get the satisfaction of having accomplished something in the real world.

– Anna Lembke

Psychiatrist and author of “Dopamine Nation”