RISE Blog | Reducing Screen Time

By: Elizabeth Perry, Peer Educator
April 29th, 2022

Honestly, I'm embarrassed to share my screen time with other people. I don't even know how I have so much time to waste on my phone between school, extracurriculars, and social obligations. Yet, I consistently spend more than 8 hours a day on my phone (?!). Through my own struggle with setting my phone down, I've found some methods that have helped me to reduce my screen time and be more present.

The Forest App

I love this app and use it all the time. Essentially, you plant a tree in your forest and input a time that you want to focus for your tree to grow. If you leave the app for too long while your tree is growing, your tree will die and leave a sad shriveled up tree. This was the best $1.99 I've ever spent and has really motivated me to stay off my phone.

Setting App Limits

Both Apple and Android have features that can help you with your time management. I have time limits set for all major time killer apps. If you're someone with a great amount of willpower, this is a great option for you. The only thing is you have to follow through with the time limit—and sometimes this is hard.

Delete the Apps you Waste the Most Time on

This was the only way I could get myself to stay off TikTok: deleting it. I would consistently find myself wasting hours at a time on the app and just getting rid of it solves that problem. The biggest downfall is that it's easy to fill your time on your phone with new apps that are equally as time wasting.

Separate Yourself from Your Phone

This could mean physically separating yourself from your phone or just turning it off for a short period of time. Charging your phone away from your bed, for example, will force you to be off your phone at night and help you to get a good night's sleep. Turning it off altogether makes it take time to check your phone, so you're forced to be intentional about when you're looking at on your phone.

Turn your Phone to Grayscale

A lot of the appeal from looking at our phone comes from the colors that stimulate the dopamine receptors in our brains. Looking at Instagram without the colors is REALLY boring and a lot of games are less captivating when there are no colors involved. Making your phone boring but less functional will make you less likely to be on it. App developers intentionally use color psychology to make you more likely to click on their app or stay engaged with it, so using grayscale can really change our relationships with these apps.

Read more about using color psychology to reduce screen time:

• Combiths, S. 2022. Your Smartest Friends Are Using Their Phone's Black-and-White Setting, Here's Why. Apartment Therapy.
• Kachan, D. 2019. Principles of Color Psychology in Mobile Application Design. Medium.

For me, using some of these tips has helped me to drastically reduce my screentime and be more present in my relationships and in my schoolwork. Hopefully, this helps you to reevaluate your relationship with your phone and increase your productivity.

 

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