People Are Downgrading Their Smartphones For Less Screen Time — And Experts Have Thoughts

Feeling attached to your phone lately? You’re not alone.

Jose Briones, a YouTube reviewer of retro tech, digital minimalist and once avid smartphone user, broke it off with his smartphone five years ago after realizing how much time he was spending on it and how lonely it made him feel. He felt a self-described addiction peaking during the COVID-19 pandemic when his phone told him he had accumulated 13 hours of screen time in one day.

“I started spending more time online,” Briones told HuffPost. “Online entertainment started to replace my positive habits and behaviors.” He stopped going to the gym, relied on his smartphone to order Uber Eats more often, gained 20 pounds and always felt a mental fog he couldn’t shake.

According to a 2022 Gallup poll, more than half of Americans believe they spend too much time on their smartphones. A more recent survey actually found that smartphone users reach for theirs an average of 205 times daily, or once every five minutes. (For millennials, that number is 324 times a day.) That can be a troubling statistic to read if you’d like to maintain productivity throughout your waking hours.

But really: How much smartphone is too much smartphone? And how do you know if your smartphone usage is affecting your mind? We spoke to some experts to ask how to recognize if we’re using our devices too much.

We also surveyed a few consumers who’ve found the ultimate solution to their distraction in retro tech. In other words: They’re using “dumbphones” — early generation mobile phones, also known as “feature phones” — and they’re happy about it.

This may seem like a cop-out answer, but according to experts: It depends.

The American Academy of Pediatrics used to recommend an hour-specific screen-time limit based on children’s age groups, but has since walked back that stance. That’s due to how highly individualized phone use can be. “Because children and adolescents can have many different kinds of interactions with technology,” the AAOP’s current screen time guidelines state, “rather than setting a guideline for specific time limits on digital media use, we recommend considering the quality of interactions with digital media and not just the quantity, or amount of time.”

Relatedly, and perhaps unsurprisingly, there also isn’t an official number on how much screen time is too much for adults.

“So much of our lives are happening on our devices that it’s very tough to say that any set number of hours is ‘good’ or ‘bad,’” said Jacqueline Nesi, assistant professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University and author of the Techno Sapiens newsletter. “Different people have different reactions to smartphones. It’s also dependent on what’s happening on the device, so it’s hard to give specific numbers.”

Nesi said it all comes down to how smartphone use interferes with your life. Ask yourself: Is it getting in the way of other activities that are important to you or your mental health? Is your smartphone interfering with time that could be spent getting together with friends or family, or focusing on physical health or even your sleep or job?

The term “addiction” with smartphone use is controversial, though there are certainly cases in which we can say how people use their smartphones is problematic or excessive. According to Cori Stott, executive director of the Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children’s Hospital, overuse of tech or media is not seen as a clinical addiction, though experts do recognize the use of the word to imply a sense of the inability to put a smartphone down. But unlike common treatment for substance addiction, abstinence may not be possible.

“An average adult cannot abstain from screen use in the modern world and still experience academic and career success,” Stott wrote in an email to HuffPost. “We consider it more like a binge eating disorder, where the solution is found in addressing the mental health challenges underlying the overuse and building self-regulation skills and habits.”

It may sound extreme, but many consumers have found that downgrading their smartphone into something more limiting, like a flip phone, has helped them with focus, depression, anxiety and more. The tech may be old, but this trend is ramping up –– interest as of late has risen with various YouTubers and Redditors frustrated with algorithms. You can now find newly made dumbphones, like the Light Phone and the aptly named Minimal phone, released within the last decade or so.

If you need some convincing, just ask Briones, who since ditching his smartphone has become the owner of DumbPhones.org and admin of the subreddit /r/dumbphones.

“My lifestyle started to decline, and I noticed that,” he said regarding his peak 13-hour screen time. “I kept thinking, ‘Dang, what’s going on?’ And I eventually figured it was mental overload from being incessantly online. I spent a lot of time on my phone — and some of it was for work, of course — but most of it was in search of pure dopamine hits, each and every day. I needed a switch, something to compliment the life I wanted to have.”

After discovering the Light Phone II, an e-ink-based phone (think Kindle) roughly the size of 10 stacked credit cards with very limited apps (a alarm, a timer, a calculator, text-based directions) and call/text abilities, he traded in his Google Pixel in an effort to completely wipe distractions from his daily life. Since his switch, Briones says his life has been more fulfilling, replacing that never-ending scroll with social activities.

“With offline activities, you have a start point and an end point,” he said. “It’s not like infinite scrolling. When you start engaging with things in person, your phone just doesn’t matter; you start giving everything your full [attention]. [With a dumbphone], you have to be okay with missing out on what’s happening and be willing to live a simpler life. That’s the exchange for time you can get back and use for other things. Like, for me, it’s walking my dog.”

He also says the limited tech inadvertently caused friends and family to call him more often: “[With the Light Phone II], it took longer for me to reply, so people just started calling me for answers” — a welcome change from the purely text-based relationships he once had.

Considering a new iPhone can cost you a minimum of $799, switching to a low-tech cell phone can save you some big bucks. A cheap prepaid phone can cost you as little as $20 (yes, really) to as much as $599. However, you can most likely find a phone to suit your needs in the sweet spot between $60 and $120.

Downgrading can also help you save on monthly bills. Twenty-five-year-old Madeline Runyan told me she got a Nokia 2780 flip phone earlier this year and cut her $1,080 annual data plan down to just $300 a year by switching from her old carrier to Mint mobile. Her only priority was to ensure she could still use group chats.

“I don’t feel like my life is ruled by a screen, I’m a lot less anxious, my mind is clearer,” Runyan said of her retro tech. “I have more time in my day. I can work on my hobbies. I don’t impulse buy anymore or look into trends. If you’re uncomfortable with that idea, I think it’s important to think about why!”

Although you can set app time limits within your phone’s settings, many users have found it’s too easy to turn off those features. But if the flip phone route isn’t for you, you can tweak your phone’s software.

A minimal launcher can make your home screen dull and less tempting to play with, simplifying it to basic text in black and white. Users can download the Dumbify or Minimal Phone Launcher for iPhone and OLauncher for Android.

Briones also recommends using the Brick, a physical device to completely block specific apps as needed. After purchasing the small tile, you just open the Brick app, toggle which apps you’d like to keep available, then tap the Brick with your smartphone to shut down everything else. The Brick will stop you from opening any app you don’t allow, and unblocking takes a tap as well.

If all else fails, make it impossible to go online. You can delete your browser app to stop Googling every single thing you can think of, or you can even change data plans to cap how much data you have, limiting your use outside of Wi-Fi.

Nesi said that although there isn’t a sole solution for all users, there’s still evidence that blocking the internet from your phone can be beneficial. A recent study published by Oxford University that blocked 327 participants’ mobile access to the internet for two weeks found that 91% saw an improvement to their mental health, attention and overall well-being.

This is just one study, of course, but according to Nesi, “People who block the internet from their phones do report better outcomes on ability to focus. But the issue is that very few people are actually able to do it. So few people end up sticking with it. There is evidence, overall, that reducing your use of phones in general has good outcomes.”

If you’re looking to cut your screen time down, you’ll have to create some healthy habits and workarounds to control your impulses. It’s important to note, however, that minimizing your smartphone’s tech or hardware may not be useful for your lifestyle.

“When we think about the general happiness piece, someone who finds a minimal or dumbphone appealing might have a really great in-person support system or friend group that is easy to connect with, whether that be by calling or because they are physically nearby,” Nesi explained. “For another person, losing that social connection that smartphones enable might be difficult — some people chat with friends by sharing memes on social media because their lives are busy but they want to stay connected, or enjoy watching updates when their family is on vacation, which would be more difficult to access without a smartphone. So all the individual factors of someone’s life might make a smartphone a better choice for one person, but a worse choice for another; it really depends on your own needs and how you balance your online and physical world life.”

In the end, the best screen time strategy is the one that fits your lifestyle. Whether that means simplifying your tech or learning to build boundaries, small steps in curbing your app and social media usage can make a big difference.