How to spend less time on your phone
10 science-backed strategies to reduce your screen time
Changing our behaviors is hard. This is especially true for habitual behaviors: the ones that we do everyday, often without thinking. And when it comes to our phones? It certainly doesn’t help that they are designed—with their bright red notifications and their slot machine pull-to-refreshes and their frictionless unlocking via facial recognition—to hook us in and keep us coming back.
So, what can we actually do to reduce our phone use? Let's go to the science.
10 science-backed strategies to use your phone less
Researchers have identified a number of "behavior change techniques" that are effective for changing behaviors like smoking, drinking, and physical activity. Luckily for us, these techniques can also offer a guide to reducing our phone use.
Strategy #1: Restructure the physical environment
Consider ways you might change your environment to make phone use less tempting. This might involve:
Avoiding or reducing exposure to cues for the behavior (e.g., putting your phone away in a cabinet where you can’t see it)
Restructuring the social environment (e.g., spending less time sitting amongst friends who are all on their phones)
Adding objects to the environment (e.g., a crossword puzzle book readily accessible to replace phone use).
We can also think of our phone screens themselves as physical environments that we can reshape to our advantage. By strategically adding friction to our phone use experience (e.g., deleting apps, blocking websites), we can become more mindful of our use and less likely to scroll. A recent randomized controlled trial of these “nudge-based” phone interventions found that they were effective in reducing individuals’ screen time.
Here’s a list of environment-focused interventions you might try to “nudge” yourself to reduce phone use:
Disable notifications
Keep your phone on silent and face-down
Keep your phone out of reach and/or out of sight
Charge your phone outside of the bedroom at night
Disable Touch ID (i.e., use a password instead)
Put your phone on grayscale
Delete frequently-used apps
Rearrange apps on your home screen
Block frequently-used websites
Put phone on Do Not Disturb or Downtime
Strategy #2: Goal Setting
Set a goal for the behavior you want to achieve.
You want it to be specific, rather than general. You want it to be challenging enough that it feels different from your day-to-day, but not so tough that it’s totally out of reach. And you want it to be measurable.
Example: My goal is to put my phone away for the evening, starting at dinnertime everyday.
Alternate example: My goal is to use my phone for less than 90 minutes per day.
[Note: “use phone less,” even if that’s our ultimate goal, is not specific or measurable enough.]
Strategy #3: Problem Solving
Proactively identify potential barriers and ways you will overcome them.
Example: A potential barrier is that I will feel tired and unmotivated at the end of the day. When this happens, I’ll have a substitute activity ready (like reading a book), instead of reaching to scroll.
This also includes “relapse prevention,” or actively planning for the possibility that you will not accomplish the goal 100% of the time.
Example: When I accidentally start looking at my phone after dinner, I will remind myself of my goal, plug it into the charger, and walk away.
Strategy #4: Action Planning
Make a plan for when, where, and how you will accomplish your goal.
This is sometimes called setting an “implementation intention.” There is good evidence that this works.
The basic formula is simple: create an “if-then” plan. If I encounter X situation, then I will do Y behavior. This allows us to identify the exact situation (the when and where) in which we’ll engage in our goal-directed behavior (the how).
Example: If I sit down to dinner, then I will plug my phone into the charging station for the rest of the evening.
Strategy #5: Self-Monitoring
Have a plan to monitor and record the behavior you want to change.
First, we need to understand when and how often we engage in the unwanted behavior. This can be a surprising powerful step, as studies suggest that simply monitoring our behavior can lead us to change it.
Example: I will monitor my past-week phone use by looking at the Screen Time app on my phone.
After we put our plan in place, we also need to monitor whether it’s working. We can do it the old-fashioned way—writing it down in a calendar or notebook, for example—or we can go digital, relying on the Screen Time (iPhone) or Digital Well-Being (Android) apps on our phones. A digital solution can be particularly useful if our goal is a bit harder to track (like number of phone minutes per day).
Example: Each day that I don’t use my phone after dinner, I’ll mark it on my calendar.
Strategy #6: Social Support
Gather social support toward accomplishing your goal.
This can be:
Practical (i.e., our husband gently reminds us about the put-away-the-phone plan)
Emotional (i.e., our husband tells us we’re doing a great job with our put-away-the-phone plan)
Unspecified (i.e., our husband acts as a “buddy” in developing his own put-away-the-phone plan).
A recent meta-analysis suggests that goal setting is more effective when done publicly or with a group, so we can also use this to our advantage.
Example: My husband and I will both set goals to reduce our phone time, and I’ll tell all the techno sapiens about my phone use plan.
Strategy #7: Social Comparison
Make yourself aware of others’ performance, and compare it to your own.
This is helpful if the comparison motivates you to match others’ behavior more closely. So, you might take a look at your friends’, family’s, or partner’s screen time and compare it to your own, perhaps sparking a little friendly competition.
Example: Knowing that my husband’s phone use time is lower than my own, I’ll take a look at his stats and compare mine. Then, I’ll put all these strategies in place and destroy him in a ruthless competition he didn’t know he was participating in.
Strategy #8: Behavior Substitution
Have a desired or neutral behavior ready to go to replace the unwanted behavior.
Example: I will replace my unwanted behavior (picking up phone) with neutral or desired behaviors (crossword puzzles, reading)
It’s helpful to plan this in advance, removing any friction that might come between you and your replacement behavior (see Restructure Physical Environment, below). The more frequently you repeat an alternate behavior, the more it will become a new habit.
Example: I will have a crossword puzzle book and pencil readily accessible near the couch.
Strategy #9: Graded Tasks
Contrary to my initial assumption—likely the result of too many years in school—this does not involve giving yourself a grade on how well you change your behavior. “Graded” here means gradually increasing in difficulty.
So, start with something extremely easy and achievable, and gradually increase the difficulty until you reach your ultimate goal.
Example: If my goal is to stop using my phone in the evenings, I could start by putting my phone down 15 minutes before bed. Every day or two, after achieving the previous day’s goal, I could then start phone-free time 15 minutes earlier.
Strategy #10: Self-Reward
Give yourself a reward if (and only if) you stick to your desired behavior change.
Rewards can be:
Material (i.e., a new crossword puzzle book)
Social (i.e., a friend congratulates you on your minimal phone use)
Non-Specific (i.e., you go on a celebratory phone-free date night with your husband).
Example: If I stick to my phone-free plan for two weeks, I’ll get myself a new crossword puzzle book.
Jacqueline Nesi, PhD is a psychologist and professor at Brown University, author of Techno Sapiens, and co-founder of Tech Without Stress.