Smartphones — the drug-dealing elephants in the room...
Getting rid of iPhone 13 and getting iPhone SE 3rd Gen instead did not result in expected effect of less screen time, if anything it caused an extra irritation of the smaller screen housing a smaller keyboard, I do still despise touch screen keyboard. With that said the irritation did not deter me from typing less, in fact what would be the point of a grander keyboard experience on a bigger screen? In any case the phone got smashed beyond economical repair and I had to get a new one. iPhone 15 was a good if not best choice for the year 2025, and as I have already proven to myself the size of the screen will not guarantee less screen time. That sucks! Something exclaimed in the back of my mind. Back to drawing board. I need the goddamn WhatsApp for work, I need certain apps which are not addictive at all yet I need them.
So I began looking at dumbphones with app store functionality but a really "shitty" screen, like an e-ink screen. I had a closer look at the super expensive totally overpriced and very restrictive light phone 3, I think it is not a bad idea to give your kids, if you have the money to spare, it makes sense. Otherwise I think, it violates the boundary between reason and the price put on that reason, in this case to have a phone that is dumber not smarter. It cannot be just a luxury dumb phone—no one should need that—at this asking price it has to be a phone that is very smart at being dumb, and I'm sorry I don't see it.
Minimal phone sounds like something I'm after at this stage of divorce from the screen. But the project is unfortunately still very raw, yes the first batches of handsets are out, and people are already using them and yes beta-testing them for free, out of desperation or ignorance of the fact, that the handset is not yet officially out. Sigh, I used to be very invested in beta testing back when, but I got no longer the stamina for such shenanigans—I need the finished product thank you.
Something tells me such smart-dumb phones will continue to emerge and develop momentum. You might even see an app from Apple itself that would turn the phone dumb, as of right the accessibility option is not what you'd expect, to say the least.
This is tough, it is tough being conditioned. Anyways, as of right now I use this nifty app which irritates me to no end, and does it work—kind of, first of all it makes me aware of how much time I spend using the app—the apps that I have added to the list of apps with limited screen time. It seems to be stable app, but I can unlock the restriction quite easily—and I do it often. Second of all I catch myself not unlocking more time(it reminds you to take a deep breath while you wait the lock to be lifted)—and I might add more seconds, right now it is at 10 seconds and the default is 5 I believe.
I've learned to unlock it for about 60 min if I am listening to a podcast, otherwise there would be no point in having this app.
Basically and this is the truth this apps keeps you aware of how much screen time you actually spend—which is important, because otherwise as you know you do not sense the time you have spent—an interesting effect of the psychological time and chronological time do not have to be synchronised and when in the flow—for the good or the bad(often bad i.e. addiction) it is utterly unsynchronised, meaning for example you do not believe that 10 minutes have passed when it felt like 2 minutes. So this is really what we're dealing with here—time theft, or rather—life-theft.
I will continue to experiment, and the most important thing is to be honest with oneself whether the nth thingamajig actually works or not. Especially if you pay for it.
