Paul Cumbo has been a high school teacher for more than two decades.  He also runs The Camino Institute, and he has authored Wilderness Therapy, his latest non-fiction work, A Path to Manhood, and other acclaimed books.

Paul has been studying social media use, especially among young adults, for a long time.  We are delighted to publish his blog post from paulcumbo.substack.com as the subject of today’s newsletter. It is a powerful and very useful read.

How many times per day do you think you check your phone? How many hours per day do you think you spend using it? If you’re not sure, you can go into your settings and look at the usage log. On an iPhone, this is under Settings > Screen Time > See All App & Website Activity. You’ll see metrics on your daily and weekly use, both in general and by app.

If you think it would be good for you to try to reduce your use, as I have, keep reading. Maybe you find your phone a distraction at work. Maybe you find that it’s interfering with relationships. Maybe (like me) it contributes to a psychopathology of hyper-productivity. Maybe (like me) you find yourself reading email at strange times, like while you’re trying to put your socks on. Maybe (like me) you just feel kind of dumb spending that much time with what is often little more than a very expensive toy.

Before I get to my three suggestions that pertain specifically to phones, I have a baseline tip. The real problem isn’t the phone itself, it’s social media. No, I’m not going to tell you to delete all your social media. (Well, that would probably be good for all of us, but I’m trying to be practical.) However, if you use more than one social media platform, choose one to delete altogether. As in, delete the account permanently. Just quit, cold turkey. Don’t choose your favorite one. Go for one that you aren’t that into. Doing this will benefit you in two ways. First, it will get rid of one source of distraction. Second, it will show you just how little you miss it. That might be a mindset shift that will help you make further changes.

Okay. Now on to phones. You can find plenty of advice on reducing phone use – some good, some not. Here are three things I’ve found effective. They work for two simple reasons: First, they’re easy to pull off, because each one is quick and uncomplicated. Second, they’re moderate, not extreme. This makes them sustainable and more likely to stick.

1. Remove all social media apps from your phone. This is different from deleting accounts altogether. What I’m proposing is deleting their apps from your phone. When I did this, I found that my use went way down. I still use my accounts, but I do so only from my computer. The interface is much less addictive than a touch screen. If you really need to access an account from your phone for some reason, you can use the web browser – but it’s less convenient, so you probably won’t use it as much.
2. Disable all but the most important notifications. The problem with do-not-disturb settings is that we tend to use them when we’re least likely to get distracted by our phones (e.g., at work or while sleeping), and turn them off when we’re most likely to (e.g., in the evening). They also create nagging anticipation of pending notifications. That creates tension. Rather, if you disable unnecessary notifications by default, you won’t get them in the first place.
3. Enable a quick setting to toggle your screen from color to grayscale. Nothing works better than this one for me. Changing the phone to grayscale makes it less interesting – but for most important tasks, no less useful. You can still make calls and send messages; you can still access the most practical apps like your calendar, email, and navigation. But things that tend to lock you into a time-wasting vortex of distraction will lose much of their grip.

If you’re skeptical about this last one, just give it a try. You can also read this article in The Wall Street Journal that reports on a study that revealed this cut an experimental group’s average use by 50 minutes per day – making it much more effective than setting app time limits. You can find the simple instructions here. And once you set it up the first time, you’ll have a shortcut: triple-click your side button and toggle the screen between grayscale and color.

These tips have worked for me, and I feel like I’ve got a much better handle on my phone use than I used to. I’ve also shared these tips with my students in recent years. As teenagers, they are of a demographic with much heavier average screen time than middle-aged dads like me. Many of them have told me these have made a big difference for them. I’d love to hear what you think if you give these things a try. Feel free to message me or leave a comment with your thoughts.