Want to unplug for the holidays? I bricked my iPhone to prevent doomscrolling - and it actually worked

"As every aspect of our working and social life is digitized, screen addiction has become less an exception to our way of living and more a widely accepted characteristic of it. I see this most commonly when I ask my friends, family, and coworkers how many hours a day they spend on their phones. The answers vary from three to eight hours."

"I average around four hours of my day on my phone, checking emails, responding to texts, scrolling social media, and checking the weather. That's four hours I could be spending reading a book, writing an article, learning how to predict the weather, calling a loved one, and doing anything besides checking the time suck and brain rot that is social media sites and messaging apps."

"Every October, as average daylight dwindles and my energy levels deplete, this feeling of learned helplessness at the hands of technology comes to a head. I have no energy to get up from my bed. It takes me a while to build the courage to transit to the gym. What do I do instead? I sit on my bed and I scroll."

"I scroll through financial advice posts telling me that I should be investing way more in the market than I already am, I scroll through engagements and weddings my former classmates are celebrating, I scroll through reactionary content strangers post on the internet for clicks, and I scroll through some of the most sinister news my eyes can see and my brain can fathom."

Screen addiction permeates daily life, with reported phone use ranging from three to eight hours per day. One person reports averaging about four hours daily on a phone for emails, texts, social media, and weather checks, displacing reading, writing, learning, and social calls. Seasonal energy declines in October worsen feelings of learned helplessness and reduce motivation to exercise, increasing passive bed scrolling. The scrolling mixes financial advice, peers' milestones, reactionary content, and disturbing news into a jumbled stream. The person temporarily deletes social apps and enforces stricter routines, but repeatedly reinstalls the apps, creating a recurring cycle.

Read at ZDNET