My family politely pointed out (more like forcefully made me acknowledge) that I was using my phone too much. It is true, I'm not using the phone only when I'm driving, sleeping or working on a very difficult task at the office.

The screen time stats gave me a shocking revelation: I was using my phone a lot. No shit, Sherlock.

I mostly read books in Kindle or articles from my Readwise library. Even though this is somewhat productive usage, the numbers still do not indicate a healthy relationship with my phone. Instagram, Facebook (yes, I'm still using it) takes 3rd and 4th place of more used apps.

Despite my overuse, I still don't pick up calls and am hard to reach by phone. Text me, you'll get an instant reply. Lots of people told me that I'm the only one replying within minutes, no matter the time. I don't know if being a perpetually connected person is doing any good to me.

I had tried to cut back my screen time before but always came back. This time, I decided to make a better attempt. The main things I did were:

1. Unsubscribed from lot of Subreddits that I was a member of.

2. Enabled privacy restrictions for Safari and disabled Facebook, Instagram, twitter, and reddit through websites.

3. Made the phone grayscale by applying a grayscale colour filter in accessibility settings.

Even after taking these extreme measures, I still found myself picking up my phone frequently and temporarily disabling steps 2 and 3. Now I understand how substance addicts might feel. Insta and Facebook are really hard to resist and avoid.

#1 worked, Reddit is now boring and only lists software engineering related repeated questions. However, Instagram and Facebook are extremely addictive. I found myself accessing them from my laptop. I also installed/uninstalled the Instagram app 4 times within this week.

Since Mr.Zuckerberg is very persuasive, I deactivated my Facebook and Instagram accounts. This should stop me from accessing them easily from desktop as well. I do have some friends and writers on Facebook that I want to keep tabs on. But it is a small price to pay and missing out these things will not matter in the long run.

I don't know how long I can keep this up, but it's worth giving a try. I do not want to deactivate twitter though. Because it is mostly about software development and is not as addictive as it used to be.

Now, it is just Readwise Reader and Kindle. If Readwise started working on Kindle or just make it easier to send articles, I can reduce my screen time even further. Let's see if I can reduce my screen time permanently in this attempt.