Gadgetory

how much do you love your smartphone chances are the answer is too much right we all want to spend less time looking at screens and more time having real-life experiences see the problem is hold on a second this'll just take a second look the data is pretty clear one in three people around the world has trouble unplugging even when they're aware that it's way healthier to put the phone down I'm not trying to nag you guys I have this problem too and I'm guilty of staring at my phone at like some of the worst possible times like when I should be playing with my kids or making sure they're not burning my apartment down but fortunately for us there's a lot of things that we can do to change our our phones look and perform in fact if you want to make your smart phone just look straight up ugly you can do that let's start with the tools that are already on your phone Apple's iOS 12 update included a new feature called screen time which gives you a wealth of data about your iPhone and iPad usage breaking down the amount of time that you spend in each individual app on your device there's also a Plymouth's which lets you set a daily allotment of time for a particular app or for an entire category of apps like social media productivity or entertainment once it runs out iOS will gray out the icon and have a full screen banner telling you you've reached your time limit Android phone users have a setting called digital well being which is pretty similar to screen time the main difference between the two features is you can basically press a button to ignore it on iOS but on Android you have to manually remove the limit which is way more annoying an Android app called CM Poe makes your phone boring with a white background and bland icons and there's a twist CFO constantly rearranges your icon so you can't form the muscle memory habit of reflexively launching the apps you can also turn on your phone's grayscale function on Android and iOS everything should turn dull and gray it's like that movie Pleasantville but in Reverse you might need to alter your behavior but you don't want a quit cold-turkey think of it more like going on a diet you still need to eat but your goal should be to cut back to more healthy levels of use so how do we do that some tips that I've seen outlined by various experts in behavioral psychology include setting goals for use your smartphone and working up to that turn your phone off during certain times of the day don't bring your phone to bed I'm working on that myself just ask my wife hi honey delete triggering apps like Facebook Twitter and Instagram and accept the fact that by limiting your smartphone use you're going to miss out on certain invitations breaking news or gossip take a deep breath embrace the FOMO for more extreme cases you can also get rid of your smartphone altogether currently there's a trend in minimalist phones which are basically phones that do a lot less there's a whole bunch of minimalist phones out there that range from most functionality to least devices like the unit Hertz jelly are tiny smartphones that are just harder to use while others like the Lite phone just make phone calls if all else fails there's always drumroll please digital detox camp these places have been around for a while and honestly they're pretty easy to hate on rich privileged people heading out to the woods where they learn to cope without electronic devices inaccessible to most of us but if you can afford it have fun hey I get it smartphones are great you can play candy crush watched YouTube tutorials and the real world is kind of a mess but when it starts to interfere with your life it may be time to reassess your relationship to technology then hopefully you can achieve that perfect phone life having real life experiences right but a whole lot of cycles so let's take a second walk in here [Laughter]