I was addicted to my phone – but one screen time hack actually made a difference

I recently learned through Apple’s Screen Time app that I was spending about eight hours a week on my phone browsing Reddit and Instagram. That adds up to 17.3 days a year spent on entertaining but ultimately pointless fluff, so my piece looking for solutions for phone addicts was highly personal.

Prof Marcantonio Spada, emeritus professor of addictive behaviours and mental health, says the warning signs are if your phone is the first thing you look at in the morning and the last thing you look at in bed. He warns that many of us have "outsourced our brain to California" because behavioural scientists and neuroscientists design apps to capture attention, and he argues the aim of using limits is to see what we’re missing rather than to purge technology for its own sake.

What worked best for me was Brick, a small grey magnetic square you stick to a metal surface—I put it on my reinforced front door. It costs £54.

United States, California

screen time, phone addiction, apple, reddit, instagram, marcantonio spada, addictive behaviours, behavioural scientists, neuroscientists, brick