This post serves as an update to the following: Digital Minimalism - 01/25/22, Digital Min. 2 - 02/06/22, DigiMin 3 - 02/23/22, Digimin4 - 04/04/22.
On 05/03/22, I re-updated some things in order to make myself use my phone less. The first being a change in mentality. I realized that it wasn't about how MANY apps you have, it was about self control, intentional usage, discipline. I allowed myself to have far more social media apps, but instead created individual app timers for 20 minutes, then 30 minutes in order to limit usage. I also had an overarching phone goal of using it for 1hour a day.
None of these lasted.
I got frustrated with a timer telling me what to do, how much to use an app, and always used the "add 10 minutes", or the "discard timer" button, rendering the entire point of having one useless. I wanted to be free, to use whatever I wanted however long I wanted, and having something popping up in the middle of my doing something and saying "okay! no more of this!" was really annoying. Some may enjoy it, some may have it work better for them, so if you want to do the same, I highly suggest trying it out! I think iPhones and Android (newer versions) have these functions, you just go to Settings and go to Digital Wellbeing and parental controls, or you could look up "timer" or "app timer" in settings and see what happens. I also still had the bedtime mode of shutting down notifications and making my phone grayscale (it luckily doesn't show up in screenshots, though) every night from 10pm to like 8am. You can also adjust that to be however long you want it to last. But, these things did not last! The first day I was pretty diligent on making sure i didn't use my phone for more than an hour, but as the days passed, it really really got blown over and demolished. I ended up disregarding timers on shit I liked to actually use, and just didn't stick to any of it. I was spending like 5 hours a day on my phone at times, sometimes more, sometimes less.
As of 05/15/22, I deleted snapchat, facebook, reddit, tiktok, and tumblr. I wasn't even logged into tumblr, but I decided to delete all social media except for discord and telegram off of my phone, just for good measure. I could see myself clinging to reddit for any sort of social media/mindless scrolling becuase everything else I actually use was gone, and I really don't want to do that/didn't want to become a redditor, so I just deleted it. I like texting clients, but things that have extra goodies like stories and story things..... like those shorts and reels and media coverage things. Just don't like them. Also changed my browser to "minimal" mode a while back, so it doesn't have news articles up my ass all the time. Feels good man :>)
I also considered leaving the one discord server I am in, but it's about music and I genuinely like getting recommendations from it, so I am keeping it. Something else I did was editing my notifications! I changed it so that the only notifications I am (hopefully) going to get directly concern me. For example, I changed my doordash notifications to be from all of them (sometimes they would just randomly notify me that I could have a discount for holidays or just. randomly.), to only letting me know about payments and deliveries. Awesome! And other things like that, seeing my recent notifications and deciding what is worth it to keep and what I want to get rid of. My games? No notifications. I don't need them.
The thing that inspired me to do all of these things was watching this video, ironically, as I was mindlessly scrolling through youtube. Speaking of the effects of mindless scrolling and the estimated effects of if you were to quit your phone, it was inspiring me to limit my usage. I don't think I will delete youtube for now, as I don't really have a PROBLEM with it, just like I didn't have a problem with snapchat. I just didn't want the temptation. But, I rarely get onto youtube and also use it lots to get links for songs that I like and other things, so yeah!
I think the biggest update/most prominent one is that I changed the black and white bedtime mode to be nearly 24/7, except for like a minute at 6am. I am hoping it'll deter me from using my phone too much, and honestly, I think it's kind of working. The lack of color just isn't interesting to me, and makes a lot of things less wanted. Granted, as for today I have spent a lot of time on my laptop instead of my phone updating everything, so we will see how long it lasts. Another update is sure to come!
Written 05/15/22