It’s a tool, not a toy. That’s my private mantra for using my iPhone.
This idea developed in my head several years back when I realised I had a lot of negative patterns using my phone. What I noticed was:
- A lot of doomscrolling on social media.
- Playing throwaway games.
- Picking up the phone when I had 30 seconds to spare.
- Checking every notification.
This wasn’t a serious problem. I didn’t track anything, but I suspect my usage was fairly average. What I didn’t like was how I was spending my time. It felt so passive, mindless and valueless. Particularly social media. If you are doomscrolling, you aren’t choosing what you consume; it’s being chosen for you. I find this particularly disturbing, especially when it comes to short-form content like videos less than 2 minutes. It’s infinitely entertaining and mostly worthless.
I decided to make some changes.
- Deleted the Facebook and X apps.
- Deleted all games.
- Disabled notifications and badges for all apps except messaging and banking.
- Updated my home screen so it only contained a single page of apps, those which I use every day. I didn’t delete all the other apps, I just made sure that they weren’t in my face all the time.
Ultimately, I tried to use my phone like a tool and not a toy.
Did I make any exceptions? Yes, I left the YouTube app installed. For me, it’s not social media because I don’t use it socially. I avoid shorts and generally watch videos from channels I subscribe to. Typically this is around 10 to 15 minute videos on topics that interest me such as AI, space, science, gaming and cooking. For me, this was a positive use of time so I was comfortable leaving it.
What’s the result?
In short, it’s positive.
How do I feel about my phone usage? Much better. I still pick up my phone too much, but it’s a much more positive relationship. Yes, I watch some YouTube. But I also use it to organise my life. E.g. Fitness, shopping, calendar, banking, reading articles, etc.
In terms of data, I don’t have anything that’s terribly reliable. I don’t have any before data. Now, Apple Screen Time tells me I spend 2-3 hours a day on my phone. This isn’t particularly useful unless you analyse it further. Not all screen time is equal. For example last week if I break it down at a very high level:
Positive usage:
- 1h 41m using Fitbod, a fitness app.
- 1h 24m using Netflix. I never watch Netflix on my phone so I must have been playing games with my daughters.
- 1h 3m Gmail.
- 50m using Songsterr for practicing guitar.
- 50m using Messages.
- 32m using Microsoft To Do. I use this to organise my weekly grocery shop.
Negative/unknown usage:
- 1h 41m using Safari. I can’t remember what I used this for.
- 1h 36m using Google. Same as Safari, I can’t remember what I used this for.
- 1h 29m using YouTube. Arguably it’s not negative, but I’ll lump it into the negative category for now.