How to gentle parent you phone
Don't quit social media. Quit micro-dosing it.
The first thing I do when I wake up is check my phone. My body has developed a reflex that fumbles for a palm-sized rectangle when I curl up horizontally, even if its just to check the time. Standard practice these days.
It seems everyone is covering Luddism lately:
wrote a NYT Styles cover story on The Lamp Club… did a deep dive into Month Offline on Vox… and while I adore the strength and sheer momentum behind these movements, I wonder what participating in them could look like for the average person. I’m thinking about ’s notes on the costs of going offline (and the privilege associated with it) — when everything we do is tied to the internet, is there a way to quiet quit it?
Illustration by borillustrations (Barbora Keherova)
Screen time as sweet treats
We talk about technology (mostly social media) as something we ingest. We consume media, spend time on feeds… but like most of the tech sector, there isn’t much regulation. Either you quit social media or you’re hooked 24-7.
A couples years back, when I had issues with my weight, I found the 16:8 intermittent fasting method very helpful. It was a simple rule — fast for 16 hours and eat within an 8-hour window. Like Severance, you knew what to expect and when to lock-in. The more complicated the rules are, the more opportunity you have to make excuses. So with exactly 75 days left in the year, I started fasting screen time: 6PM-10AM.
Sure, you can download apps like Opal and buy boxes like Brick. But, to quote Atomic Habits, “small, consistent actions hold the key to remarkable transformations.”
I know, I cringed when I wrote this too.
Parental controls are your best friend
For iOS users, go to settings > screen time > downtime to set your hours. It’s right next to parental controls. Funny isn’t it? that we truly are our own worst enemy.
You’ll be prompted to select the apps you want access to after 6pm. By default, Apple limits access to the Weather, Reminder, Calendar apps. For myself, I cut out social media after 6 but was faced with a daunting question: is Substack social media?
Same way people debate over whether eggs are vegetarian, it seems there’s no straight answer to this question. I decided to let myself keep Substack for the first week or two, as a nicotine patch of sorts.
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Ah yes, the FOMO
It’s no secret that we choose not to abstain from the internet for fear of missing out. I mean, I did miss the internet’s reaction to Zohran Mamdani’s win. Hopescrolling, someone called it.
This is where the true tests of friendship come in. Do your friends care enough about you to send you screenshots of the tweets you missed? Is this TikTok funny enough to be screen recorded? (Ideally, your friends would be offline too, but we’ve gotta start somewhere).
But also, remind yourself that timelines/newsfeeds/FYPs aren’t chronological anymore. Logging back onto your socials just means seeing what you would’ve otherwise seen just a couple hours late. The engagement-optimizing-algo-gods have already decided your fate.
Think about the infrastructure of social media, how it’s designed to make us feel — reminds me of this 2015 Vox essay on how automakers were behind the invention of jaywalking.
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AI will try to summarize all you unread messages
Like, LEAVE ME ALONE! What does a girl have to do to read her friend’s memes?
Hell is where all nuance and literary flare goes to die. And we, my dear reader, are in hell. AI is all fun and dandy when it’s walking you through how to jailbreak your phone, but personal messages? The art of the yap is half the fun. Have we not learned ANYTHING from the iMessage auto-summaries?!
I do wonder what a summary of my friend’s wild halloweekend night out looked like… BUT I’ll be sticking to my guns and reading her novel-length text chain with my morning cup of coffee.
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The inevitable productivity spike
Ahh, this is where I turn into the 10 Productivity Hacks To Increase Your Output newsletter. Gentle reminder that wellness can be simply cutting out the noise. I disagree with Google’s productivity advisor: don’t get off your phone in pursuit of “optimizing” your life.
Yes, with the absence of my morning TikTok time, my days started much earlier than before. My roommate also observed that I started sleeping earlier cause I’d get bored. I began to take notice of how much time I actually spent on my phone rather than writing this newsletter, reading, talking to friends…
But I think its equally important to be comfortable with empty downtime. I started zoning out more. I let my mind wander further than it used to. It’s easy to try to fill up your newfound free time with more busy work. Sitting alone with your thoughts is the hard part.
… and that’s just the beginning! I still have 53 more days to go…
Hello friends! I recently enabled paid subscriptions to support some of my more rogue ventures in cyber celibacy (typewriters, building a printing press… more to come).
I also created a Snail Mail Membership, where (in true neo-luddite fashion) I’ll physically mail you this newsletter on a bi-monthly basis. For the first dozen snail mail members, I’ll handwrite your first letter <3