steady

Focus and work · The phone

Grayscale the screen

Set your phone to black and white. Android and iPhone both have it under accessibility. Add it to the quick toggles.

2 minEvidence: decent

Colour is part of the pull. In a small study, people who switched their phones to grayscale used them about twenty minutes a day less. A later trial with more people found grayscale cut measured screen time at once, where setting goals moved it less and more slowly, and tracking alone did little. Evidence: decent

Small samples, mostly students, volunteers who wanted to cut down. Still one of the few phone tricks with a controlled trial behind it, and it takes two minutes to set up.

The feed is still there. It's just less interesting to look at, which turns out to be enough.

Source: Holte, Giesen and Ferraro, 2021, Current Psychology; Zimmermann and Sobolev, 2023, Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking (link)

Same theme: The phone

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