“Not being on Instagram every single day makes everything else so much more enjoyable”.
17-year-old Adam Hall found his efforts to minimise his social media use challenging but ultimately rewarding.
Roughly a year and a half since consciously aiming to curtail his internet use, he’s cut down his average daily screen time to one-and-a-half hours.
“I found my old iPod, […] I would basically use that as my phone, […] all it would do is play music, receive messages and I could take photos on it. I don’t even think the web browser worked”.
Adam follows a growing trend of youngsters re-adopting older devices to cut down on screen time.
Recent years have seen an increase in cellphone devices designed to merge smartphone features with the functionality, or lack thereof, of older ‘ .
“It’s not something that can be simplified or just ignored,” says ECU Associate Professor Nicola Johnson on smartphone addiction.
The internet addiction researcher stresses the extent to which smartphones have become interwoven with day-to-day life, which means it isn’t as easy for most people to cut them out entirely as some might claim.
“Your phone is a watch, it’s a diary, it’s a to-do list, it’s a phone, it’s a timer, it’s your wallet, […] it’s replaced a lot of things that we used to rely on”.
While she suggests some years down the line, “there might be a big return to […] the Nokias”, she expects there are many aspects of smartphones which will continue to be “all-consuming”.
She explains the term “smartphone addiction” can tend to be misappropriated.
“It’s only when it’s to the detriment of other things in your life, like your relationships, that it needs to be worried about”.
Professor Johnson says while smartphones have become an “extension of ourselves”, it isn’t “necessarily a bad thing”.
“You can’t say that you’re addicted to it because […] you’re depending on it, but you’re choosing to engage with it”.
She emphasises the importance of screen time and personal well-being regarding smartphone use.
“When I walk the dog, I deliberately do not have earbuds in, I don’t talk on the phone […] because I want to experience nature, I want to hear, I want to smell, I want to look, and I want all those senses to be fully utilised.”
“If I want to take photos, I’ll just bring my camera with me, or I’ve got all the songs I like [as] physical copies […] instead of having them on my phone,” says Adam.
He says the hardest part for him of getting off social media to begin with was finding things to do with moments of free time.
“Whenever I was bored, I would just instinctually get my phone and hop on Instagram”.
Adam says communication with classmates via instant messaging is necessary for his studies, but he’d often find himself drawn to other social media activity.
“I would open Instagram, respond to a message, and then when I’m finished with the message, I’d just automatically go to Instagram Reels because I’m already there”.
He’s found Beeper, an instant messaging-only app designed to collate chats from “over 10 different chat networks”, helpful in isolating needed communication features from other time-consuming elements of social media.
“When I found out about [Beeper], I […] uninstalled Instagram, swapped to that for my messages [and] just started researching ways to stop using my phone.
“I started playing the guitar again and I started drawing and practising writing […] I sort of forgot that I had all those things I could do”.
