How to Break Up with Your Phone, Revised Edition: The 30-Day Digital Detox Plan

by Catherine Price

I had these people who would come up to me and they would say, “I’m not on social media…I value my real-life interactions. I value the moment. I value presence and I value intimacy.” And I would say,…“We’ll get you eventually.” —Sean Parker, founding president of Facebook

our attention is the most valuable thing we have. We experience only what we pay attention to. We remember only what we pay attention to. When we decide what to pay attention to in the moment, we are making a broader decision about how we want to spend our lives. And just like time, once we’ve spent our attention, we can never get it back. The opportunity cost is enormous.

what we’re trying to avoid—is letting a state of mindless distraction become our default.

So please take a moment right now to answer this question: What do you want to pay attention to? In other words, what is important to you? What do you want to experience or accomplish in your one, precious life?

here’s a super fun Phone Time Calculator (based on being awake for sixteen hours per day)

If you sleep eight hours a night and you’re picking up your phone fifty times a day (which would be relatively few), you’re being interrupted more than three times an hour while you’re awake. If you’re receiving, say, seventy-five notifications a day (again, that’s probably low), that’s almost five interruptions per hour. In other words, of course you feel frazzled, distracted, burned out, exhausted, and like you have no time for the things you claim to care about: your time is being shredded into what Brigid Schulte, author of Overwhelmed, calls “time confetti.”

Be sure your letter includes details about specific things you’d like to change and what you’re looking for in your next relationship—in

There’s power in a name, so I encourage you to come up with a new term to describe the role your phone plays in your life, ideally one that reminds you of why you’re trying to break up with it.

like I might feel if I were sitting at the kitchen table and suddenly thought of food, even though I wasn’t hungry.

“I really hate the shifting of etiquette that has made it okay for people to use their phones

Unless you have some sense of how you want to be spending this reclaimed time, you’re likely to feel anxious and possibly a bit depressed—and you’ll be at risk of sliding right back into your old habits.

come up with ideas—and plans—for offline things ahead of time, so that when you find yourself with free time, you’ll be less likely to reach for your phone.

identify a few things you could do in spare moments of downtime, or when you’re alone, or during times when you’re exhausted and would usually get sucked into a phone spiral on the couch.

Problem apps are the technological equivalent of junk food: they give us an instant hit of dopamine, and even though we know that bingeing on them makes us feel bad, once we start using them, it’s really hard to stop. (That’s because, as we’ve discussed, they’re designed to hack our brains’ dopamine systems by using tricks borrowed from slot machines.)

delete your problem apps from your phone. I’m serious. Do it now. The app, panicking, may respond to your attempt with a manipulative question (“Are you really sure you want to delete me and all my data?”). Say yes and then shake your head in disgust: everyone knows that the app didn’t really delete any of your data. It’s too valuable!

If you decide that you do want to use them, that’s fine—but do so in a structured way. Define your purpose ahead of time.

saying that you “do” or “don’t” do something—framing an action as part of your identity—is much more effective than saying that you “have to” or “can’t” do something.

you are more than a brain sitting on top of a body.

Pay attention to your breath and the feeling of your body as it moves.

habit as “a choice that we deliberately make at some point, and then stop thinking about, but continue doing, often every day.”

every habit is a loop made up of three parts:

once a habit has crossed the line to an addiction, it can be triggered by cues that are so subtle that we don’t even notice them.

we’re going to be adding friction to the behaviors we’re trying to cut back on and reducing friction for the behaviors we’re trying to encourage.

Every time you hear or see a notification, you know that there’s something new and unpredictable waiting for you—two qualities that we are hardwired to crave—and your brain releases dopamine, motivating you to reach for your phone to see what that thing might be. (Slot machines are a great example of the addictive power of anticipation: they could immediately reveal whether or not you’ve won, but instead you have to wait for the wheels to stop spinning.)

notifications

interrupt us. They pull us out of whatever we are doing (even

and encourage us to redirect our attention toward an app—usually as a way to make money for the c...

transform checking your phone in the morning and evening (and middle of the night) from an automatic habit to a deliberate choice.

Having your phone on the table—which is a very common habit—signals to the person you’re with that they’re only as important as the next thing that pops up on your screen. And even if your phone is face down, it’s still likely to reduce the quality of your interactions because you’re still likely to have part of your attention trained on your phone.

Not okay to take out phone: If you are using your phone to distance yourself from the interaction you are supposedly having (for example, you’re bored with the conversation, so you start texting someone else).

Our ability to maintain our focus—whether it be [on] a work project, a homework assignment, or something as simple as watching a television program—has been seriously jeopardized, and we believe that modern technology is a major culprit. —Adam Gazzaley and Larry Rosen, The Distracted Mind: Ancient Brains in a High-Tech World

“If we immediately entertain ourselves by talking, by acting, by thinking—if there’s never any pause—we will never be able to relax. We will always be speeding through our lives.”

Over time, regular reading causes physical changes to the brain in areas responsible for reasoning, processing visual signals, and even memory. In other words, learning to read doesn’t just enable us to store and retrieve information; it literally changes the way we think. It reorganizes our neural circuitry in a way that encourages creativity, problem-solving, and insight, and increases our ability to sustain attention.

“Ignoring is an active process.”

being able to ignore distractions is good for our working and long-term memories, too.

“Your mind wanders because you have a mind.”

five minutes per day will help.)

When you have the internet in your pocket, there is no room for serendipity. You’re much less likely to “stumble upon” a great restaurant or an unexpected experience, because, like most people, you’ve probably gotten into the habit of researching everything first, often exhaustively.

“maximizing.” Not only is it tiring, but it can also rob you of the wonderful feeling of discovering things by accident.

“Seemingly small interactions [are] an important part of what [keeps] us connected to the fabric of our local community. They [contribute] to our sense of belonging.”

Instead of worrying about what I might miss if I step away from my devices, I focus on all the things I am definitely missing when I’m absorbed in and distracted by my screens, such as the sensory details of the world around me or the pleasure of being fully present with people in person—which is to say, the things that truly matter to me.

It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who, in the midst of the crowd, keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. —Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance”

what started as a breakup will end as a breakthrough.

our goal is to train ourselves to notice when we begin to drift back to our old habits, and to use the tools and techniques we’ve worked on together to gently get ourselves back on track. Every time we do so, we’re succeeding.

“See/Think/Feel/Wonder.”

Whenever you notice that you’re itching to check something—email, social media, messages, the news, a dating app, whatever—ask yourself: What’s the best thing that could be waiting for you?

What is the likelihood that this will happen?

pick a habit that you’ve been trying to establish (for example, practicing stillness or doing Stop, Breathe, and Be) and see if you can use the sight of other people on their phones as your cue.

define how you will put the following seven statements into practice.

Allowing yourself regular guilt-free phone time will help you avoid bingeing and make it much easier to stick to your overall goals long term.