How I Accidentally Kicked My Smartphone Addiction

If my resume showed my real experience, it would say: Media Content Consumer with 10 years of experience. The "Skills" section of the document would celebrate my proficiency in "browsing and curating hundreds of hours of content on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube." I'd be Senior-Staff in whatever company I applied for. Sadly there is no market for social media content consumer, because that's what everyone will do anyway, without monetary incentive.

To change my habits, I wanted to attempt an internet detox. However, my background indicates low follow-through odds. I am an average 20-something with an iPhone. I like salivating to Instagram food porn, scrolling through my YouTube recommended list without actually watching any video, browsing weight-loss advice from reddit, and finally, watching League of Legends players complain about Riot Games on Twitch. I don't do all of those consistently but have had phases these past few years where that's all I've done in my free time. At my worst times of phone addiction, I'd watch YouTube for hours, from the moment I get home from work to when I'd go to sleep.

In November 2023, I moved from a community that offered free home Wifi to an apartment that didn't. I took this as opportunity to try an experiment: see how long I can survive without home Wifi. So, I moved in and didn't bother looking for home internet plans. I was so hyped that I fantasized about becoming a superhuman monk with insane levels of discipline and self-control. However, I had a lot of "handicaps" preventing me from reaching my enlightened-monk goals: there were a lot of places where I could still get Wifi like the common areas in my apartment, my boyfriend's apartment, and the office. Although, I would often find myself lying in bed, patiently waiting for TikTok to load cooking tutorials on the crappy cell service that reached my apartment. I'm honestly surprised that I didn't completely give up the experiment and activate the router and modem that was pre-installed in my closet.

Eventually, I got bored of waiting for my phone to load videos and took to journaling. I didn't realize how much crap was just sitting in my mind just waiting to materialize. I had to give my thoughts form so that they'd stop bouncing around in my brain. Writing solved the problem of filling up my free time at home without internet.

In mid-February, 3 months into the experiment, I discovered that a friend's guest Wifi reached my unit. Weirdly enough, only my laptop, and not my phone, was able to connect the internet. The signal disappeared from time to time, but it was consistent enough to rely on less bandwidth demanding tasks like consulting Stack-Overflow and posting on Medium. This was the time when I decided to dabble in blogging and Just Bought Some Ink was born. 

Although I had internet access on my laptop, I wasn't craving YouTube videos or Instagram Reels. I think my interest in consuming video entertainment dwindled because of two things: no service on my phone and newfound hobbies. To survive the boredom of the 3 months without Wifi, I developed interests in game development and writing. I'm still in the honeymoon phase of both hobbies, where everything is so novel and exciting that even cooking videos cannot entice me as much. Since my phone was the main medium for watching videos and consuming other addicting content, having no signal made social media lose its appeal.

What I've learned from this experiment is: forcibly disconnecting yourself from distractions like the internet allows you to explore other hobbies that can replace scrolling on your phone. Although the experiment of a full internet detox fell through, I gained insight into my phone addiction and was able to replace browsing social media with other hobbies.

Remote cabin life: no Wifi needed.

Personal experiments with positive unintended side-effects is what I live for. Stay tuned for more self-development experiments in my newsletter, Thursday Reflections.