Curing My Phone Addiction One App at a Time

I, like most of Gen Z, have fallen victim to doom scrolling one too many times. I’ll give myself a five minute scroll on Tik Tok or Instagram as a study break and before I know it, this quick break turns into twenty minutes of scrolling. Despite being hyper aware of my high screen time and the downsides of doom scrolling, I always find myself doing it. 

Ironically enough, while mindlessly scrolling on tik tok, I heard about an app that could help me fix this bad habit. Opal is a screen time management app meant to encourage its users to spend less time on their phones. Opal’s two main features include focus sessions and blocks. Focus sessions are best for impromptu study sessions or moments when you simply need to get off your phone and turn your attention elsewhere. During focus sessions, apps that you’ve selected as distracting will be blocked with session difficulty varying from normal to timeout, or deep focus, if you have Opal pro. 

The second feature, blocks, allows you to schedule productivity sessions, set app limits and app locks. The scheduled productivity sessions are perfect if you find yourself going on your phone during lectures or if you’d like to avoid using your phone before bed. The app limits are self explanatory and let you set a time limit on usage for apps. Finally, the lock feature will block specific apps all day but allow you to unlock it a certain number of times throughout the day for a specific length of time.

At the beginning of the quarter I found that even after long study sessions in the library or Coho, I barely got any work done. This wasn’t because my assignments were extremely time consuming but actually because I kept getting distracted from my phone. I didn’t want to spend countless hours in the library if I didn’t need to so I decided to use Opal and see if it would help me focus. I started by doing 25 minute focus sessions followed by short study breaks before starting a new session. I reached for my phone a few times during my first few sessions however as I did more, I was reaching for my phone less and eventually continued doing work even after my focus session ended. Although this might sound like a small feat, as someone who used to spend an embarrassing amount of time consuming short form content such as Tiktoks or Reels, it felt refreshing to not feel the constant urge to check my phone. 

Although the study session and block features are most helpful, my favorite feature is the phone pickups counter. The app tracks how many times you pick up your phone throughout the day. While this feature is more discreet, it puts into perspective how much I rely on my phone and has effectively killed my urge to impulsively check my phone, “just in case”. 

It’s unrealistic to aim for a screen time of below an hour because our phones are indispensable to our lives; however, setting realistic expectations, like cutting back on the amount of screen time can be incredibly advantageous. One way I’ve started doing this is implementing the app limit feature so that I can only spend thirty minutes a day on distracting apps before they’re locked. Although a few minutes of doom scrolling here and there might not feel detrimental, constantly consuming short form content can increase your screen addiction and decrease your attention span, making it harder to stay focused when it matters. Instead of beating yourself up because you wanted an unrealistically low screen time, you should change small habits here and there. No one is perfect, however, even these small steps can make a difference.

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