How I Cut My Screen Time to Under One Hour a Day

I used to be the sort of person who would spend hours and hours on my phone every day. Whether it was Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, or TikTok, my phone’s battery was guaranteed to be at 5% by noon. It distracted me at school, home, work, and in the car. Wake up? Block blast. A lull during class? Instagram. Free time after school? TikTok. But all that changed when I came to college. Sort of. 

Coming to college was like entering a warm room on a cold day. Fresh opportunities were all around, classes were new and exciting, the campus was gorgeous, and the people were all friendly and amazing. For the most part, I found that college was a blast, and for the first few weeks of college my screen time was at an all-time low of three hours a day (which is still horrible). I was eating with friends instead of my phone. Walking around campus instead of scrolling. Meeting new people instead of rotting in bed. Being at college allowed me to step out of my phone and into the real world. That was, until week five hit.  

When week five came around, the novelty of it all had mostly worn off. Classes were picking up, people were less available to hang out, and there just wasn’t as much excitement in the air as there once was. It felt like a big slump, so I went back to using my phone again. I scrolled and scrolled and scrolled for hours, just like I used to in high school, and classwork got pushed aside. My days were filled with unproductivity and laziness, until one day, I scrolled across a video that changed my whole perspective. 

It was a young man, just out of college, talking about phone addiction and how it had impacted his life. Like me, he used to scroll and use his phone for hours and hours daily, and it wasn’t until he graduated from college that he realized what a mistake that was. He’d missed out on career experiences, friendships, new opportunities, and so much more, wasting it all away online. I could feel his intense regret through the video, and not wanting to be like him, I made a change. 

I started small, with a screen time limit of 5 minutes for Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. Initially, it worked. I would check all the apps and eventually the limit would pop up and I’d turn it off. It didn’t last long though, because soon I just clicked the 15 more minutes option or the ignore limit button, and the problem continued to persist. So, then I decided to take it a step further. 

Instead of limits, I deleted the apps off of my phone entirely. With all of them gone, I couldn’t possibly spend as much time on them as I did before. The mobile games just weren’t as interesting as social media, so my screen time plummeted. Yet at the same time, I had nothing to do with all the extra hours I had on my hands. If I was just going to sit around doing nothing, what was the point? I might as well spend my time doing something, even if it was just being on my phone. But I knew I couldn’t just keep wasting my life away on my phone, so I decided to invest my time in discovering and exploring my passions. 

I knew I loved English, so I picked up some books and started reading for the first time in a while. I also tried my hand at creative writing and found a lot of joy and satisfaction in the worlds and characters I created. I started going to the gym and found cardio to be fun, as well as yoga, and slowly but surely, the time before, after, and in-between my classes and work were filled less by staring at a screen and more by time doing things I actually enjoyed. What lowered my screen time the most was getting rid of all the unnecessary distractions and spending that time doing what I loved to do. 

I haven’t disappeared off the surface of the Earth though. I still check Instagram on my computer from time to time to keep up with friends, and I find myself spending only around a minute on it before I get bored (mostly because it’s hard to watch reels on a computer). It’s all about finding a balance between keeping up with what’s important to you and keeping time away from unwanted distractions. 

I wouldn’t have had all the opportunities I have today if I’d kept spending all my time online, and I now find that I have much more time to get schoolwork done. It’s hard but keeping myself off social media and off my phone has improved my life significantly, and I’m glad I made the switch. 

Cover photo by peter suthinu on Unsplash