重构你与手机的关系：从通知管理到物理锁机的数字排毒指南

Christine Zerette: I'm Christine Zerette and you're listening to the Wirecutter Show. This week on the pod, we are hitting a theme. If you listened to our episode on Tuesday, you know it was about kids and tech and how so many parents are struggling with managing things like screen time, phone, and social media use. It's only fair that we also address the adults in the room. This episode, I'm talking with Wirecutter tech writer Brenda Stolar about how you can reset your relationship with your phone and gain some of that attention back. Brenda just published a couple pieces on this topic which we'll link to in the show notes. Brenda, welcome back to the show.

Brenda Stolar: Thank you. I'm happy to be back.

Christine Zerette: It's great to have you. I feel like we have reached a critical moment in society where people are really really tired of how addicted they feel to their devices. We actually covered this, we've covered this a couple times on the show. We've talked about the Brick and it's this device that locks you out of apps. Am I tapping into kind of the zeitgeist of what's going on right now?

Brenda Stolar: A thousand%. I think that this has always been an on and off trend. Like we've seen people wanting to digitally detox in the past. So, it's not new, but I think this is the worst it's ever been. And ironically, I think that's due to the rise of social media apps because people are going on Instagram and TikTok to post about digitally detoxing, which is so funny. It's like you're scrolling through TikTok and it's like how to get off of your phone while you're scrolling through your phone. Yeah. There's just been this rise in tips and other devices that you can use like I know we're going to get into it later but like dumb phones or the Brick that you had mentioned certain apps that you can use. So you have seen this trending a lot ironically on social platforms about people trying to get off of their phones and off of social platforms.

Christine Zerette: Right. Okay. So, you've written a couple of articles recently sort of around this theme of a digital detox, how to create a better relationship with your devices, how to kind of manage your time and your attention in a way that you want to be doing, right? I'm curious if somebody is kind of feeling that way, they they feel like they might be spending too much time on their phone, how do you do an audit of that? How do you actually figure out if that's true? Is it just sort of like a loosey goosey vibe or is there some concrete way to figure it out?

Brenda Stolar: So, I hate to break it to everyone. I feel like if you're questioning whether you're spending too much time on your phone, you probably are. Or if you find that you need to do something productive, you're like, I'm going to do laundry today or I'm going to clean my apartment today. And then suddenly three hours go by because you've been sucked into Reels or TikTok. Perhaps there is a bit of a problem there. If you really want to see the numbers, it may ruin your whole day, but you can. There is a screen time feature on iPhone that allows you to see a full breakdown of your average screen time, how much time you spend on specific apps, how many times you pick up your phone, also in the settings. Do you go in the settings and you can find it?

Christine Zerette: So, you would go into Hold on, let's do this in real time. Do we want to do we want to both check our screen time?

Brenda Stolar: Yes, I would. Okay, let's play a fun game.

Christine Zerette: Okay, I've got mine open. I've got my settings open. I have an iPhone. You have an iPhone?

Brenda Stolar: Yes. So, on Android, you're going to have a similar feature. It's just called digital well-being, but it breaks it down very similarly. So, you're going to go into settings. You're going to go to I hope listeners are doing this in real time as well.

Christine Zerette: Screen time. Okay. Screen time.

Brenda Stolar: See all app and website activity.

Christine Zerette: Well, so I have apps and website activity.

Brenda Stolar: Yes. Okay.

Brenda Stolar: Um, so let's see. Daily average is 7 hours and 55 minutes. It tells me my social apps a total of 18 hours and 52 minutes.

Christine Zerette: For the whole week. For the whole week.

Brenda Stolar: Yes. For the week. Mhm. Instagram takes up about 9 hours and 48 minutes. Tik Tok is 5 hours and 4 minutes. messages two hours 55 minutes. So, it gives you a breakdown of each app. I do spend a lot of my time on Tik Tok. Notifications, my daily average is at 200, and that also gives you a breakdown of which apps you get the most notifications from. Yeah, I mean, my screen time's horrifyingly high. Yours is not bad, actually. I don't want to say it for you.

Christine Zerette: Oh, well, mine is 5 hours and 1 minute. That's my daily average on my phone. 3 hours and 30 minutes is spent on Safari. Am I a boomer? Am I just like searching up stuff all the time? I'm not using any social apps.

Brenda Stolar: No, it might be that your whatever you're looking at links out like opens up in Safari, you know.

Christine Zerette: Okay. Yeah. And then my next is my New York Times cooking app. My next is my workout app and then messages. And I'm going to give messages 100% to my 10-year-old who uses my phone for messaging her friends. So [laughter]

Brenda Stolar: fair. But see, like this is where it comes back to this idea that it's such a bad thing to have a high screen time. And yes, it is. I'm just very chronically online. I need to double check that 18 hours of Instagram because that doesn't sound right. [laughter]

Christine Zerette: Doesn't sound right.

Brenda Stolar: Studios using your phone.

Christine Zerette: I don't know.

Christine Zerette: Well, that it's interesting because I think this has now sort of in part become I I can imagine when you were a kid, people talked about like how much time do kids spend on TV per week. We even talk about it now. And I I've always thought of those numbers as being crazy high. Like people spend four or five hours a day on TV or eight hours a day on TV. But even just thinking of five hours a day on my phone, that feels like a lot. So there are ways that you can get into the details. Like you said, you can either kind of have a vibe check or you can actually just look it up on your phone. So that's pretty cool. All right. So let's say somebody has just checked their screen time and they want to spend less time on their phone. Where would you, you know, recommend that they start?

Brenda Stolar: I think there's a range. I think if you're really bad like me and just constantly on your phone, I didn't expect this to work. I turned on this setting on my phone where you can change the notification count on your display. So, when you go into your settings and you click notifications, you usually have this stack of notifications that come through and it tells you which app it is and what the notification is. And so every time you pick up your phone to maybe check the time, you're constantly seeing these alerts and it gives you that craving to tap into that app and figure out what's going on. In your notifications in your settings on an iPhone, you can change that stack to count. And so when you look at your display, you just see the number of notifications at the bottom of the screen. You don't see which apps are telling you what, you would have to physically swipe up to see what those notifications are. And that acts as a bit of a barrier. It kind of creates that in between moment where you're not having that urge right away to tap into the app. And for me, I didn't expect that to work. It really did decrease my urge to tap into those apps.

Christine Zerette: Why do we get so many notifications on our phones if you have notifications activated? Is this purely app makers trying to get you to spend more time on their apps?

Brenda Stolar: 100%. I mean, they have, you know, their goals. They want to hit their user retention rates. They want that high retention rate. they're taking advantage of that dopamine hit. Every time you get a ding or every time you see that banner, you're like, "Ooh, something new. Let me look at it." And then you're sucked in. And promotional notifications, like a pizza app will send you notifications at 3:00 p.m. about getting pizza. And if you're hungry, then you're probably gonna get that pizza. Even apps that feel innocuous like LinkedIn, you'll get an alert in the middle of the afternoon saying, "See who viewed your profile." And I always get sucked into that. I'm always like, "Oh my God, who viewed my profile? Let me go see who it was." And then it's like a recruiter for some random place. It's totally bait, but we take it anyway.

Christine Zerette: I am kind of like a blunt instrument type of person when it comes to apps and notifications. I basically turn them all off and sometimes to my my own detriment because I'll miss things. But I like what you're talking about because you're not completely turning off notifications. You're sort of shrinking them down so that you know they're there, but you're not necessarily tempted to read them and see what they're saying.

Brenda Stolar: Yes. I wish I had the ability to just mute everything. [laughter] I noticed Gen Z does that. They love do not disturb. They love do not disturb. I like to be able to make sure that I'm not missing anything work-related or anything from friends and family. So, the scheduled summary is another way to help if you don't want to completely turn off notifications.

Christine Zerette: Oh, I like that. So, like, how do you do that? Do you go into again into the settings or something in the settings to do that?

Brenda Stolar: Yeah, you can go into your settings, your notifications, and then there is a scheduled summary tab. So, you can pick which apps that you want included in the summaries. So, if there are specific apps that you really do want notifications for daily, but you don't want to miss them by completely muting them, you can add that to the list. So, you're not inundated with just notifications constantly. And they're also grouped together, so it's also not as overwhelming.

Christine Zerette: I like that having sort of a little control about when you get them. You can just choose ahead of time and then, you know, they're delivered to you a couple of times a day.

Brenda Stolar: Maybe you have them delivered on your lunch break or maybe you have them delivered after work.

Christine Zerette: Yeah, I like that after work. And what are some of the other ways that you can manage notifications through built-in features, like maybe with specific groups or contacts?

Brenda Stolar: Another one is Focus mode. So when you have Focus mode turned on, you can pick specific contacts and apps that you are allowing notifications from. So that can be great if you're going to sleep or if you're trying to focus on work or you're working out, you can set it to where you're only getting notifications from your parents or your spouse or whoever you want and then nothing else comes through.

Christine Zerette: All right, so that's a lot of great ways to start managing your notifications. If you can do the count feature on the lock screen, you can set up summaries so you're just getting kind of batch notifications a couple times a day. You can turn on focus time. or you can be like me and just turn them off completely. Next, we are going to talk about some other ways to manage screen time. So, stick around. We're going to get into it after the break.

Christine Zerette: Welcome back. Now that we have covered managing notifications, Brenda, I want to talk about managing ourselves, at least the time we spend on our phones. I know there's been a lot of talk about dumb phones. What do you think about that? Is that a viable solution for someone?

Brenda Stolar: I would say to start with the built-in tools on your phone first. Dumb phones sound great in theory, but they can be very difficult to use in practice because of the fact that our society is just built on smartphones. Two factor authentication, transit, concert tickets. There's not really a way to do that on a dumb phone. If you're going to a concert, you can't have someone text you the ticket or you can't even scan a QR code at a restaurant if they don't have paper menus. So, it's just very difficult unless you're really willing to change your lifestyle.

Christine Zerette: right? Like I'm thinking about like I went to a Jonas Brothers concert last month and I was running late. my friends were already there and so my one friend sent me the concert ticket through the ticket master app and so it's like little minor things like you're gonna have to prepare for that and the only other solution is to carry your smartphone on you just in case but then that defeats the purpose

Brenda Stolar: or you have to go all 90s or early odds and like print everything at home so that means you need to buy a printer and print out that ticket print out the map quest directions you know all that good stuff

Christine Zerette: oh my god I remember [laughter] Map Quest

Brenda Stolar: I know, right?

Christine Zerette: Let's say that you just feel like you need a little bit of help. You've got this fancy schmancy smartphone that can do so many things, but you want to kind of limit the way that you're using it. So, what are your sort of easy answers for that?

Brenda Stolar: Yeah. So, screen time limits or digital well-being limits where you can set specific amounts of time that you're allowed to be on each app per day and which days. So, you can go into your settings into those apps and you can say, I will only allot myself and it's only going to be on the weekends. That could really help because then you get basically frozen out of the app. Like, you can't access it without seeing a popup that says your limit is up for today. They are very easy to override which is why a lot of people do default to these other devices like a dumb phone or brick but I would start with that and I wouldn't start with a lot of apps. I think easing into it is the best way. So going into that screen time feature that we looked at earlier seeing that breakdown and maybe going for the apps that you see the highest screen time on is a good idea. Another one is assistive access which I don't think gets talked about a lot. It's originally designed for people with cognitive disabilities. This is for iPhone specifically I will say.

Christine Zerette: What does it do?

Brenda Stolar: It basically you pick a specific set of apps. So in this case you would pick maybe the essentials. So text calls maybe camera and Gmail or your mail app. When you set it to assist of access, you get like four squares on your screen and it's just those apps that you chose and you can only tap into those apps. So, you can't swipe up and access your home screen where all of your apps are available. Now, you can access them by like triple tapping on the lock button to exit assistive access mode because again, you can override a lot of things. So, it does require self-control, but it just fully transforms what you see on the display in a way that's super simple and more restrictive. That way, you're not going to get as distracted by all of these other apps because you only have the ones that you've set for yourself.

Christine Zerette: Oh, I like that. That is a little bit like the brick in the sense that it's only giving you access to like the things that you have pinpointed that you want access to for that moment. What are some other things that people can do?

Brenda Stolar: Grayscale mode is also a good one. So when you go into your settings, you can depending on iPhone or Android, you can set your phone to just completely look black and white and so it's not as appealing.

Christine Zerette: So it's kind of like making it look boring.

Brenda Stolar: Yes.

Christine Zerette: Kind of like what you do with a narcissist. It's like gray rocking.

Brenda Stolar: Yes. 100%. It's like suddenly this is not as appealing as it used to be. [laughter] And it's actually terrible for me. Okay. So it makes it visibly less attractive.

Christine Zerette: Yeah. Most of these apps just are visually appealing and so it's it's easy to be sucked in because it's fun to look at. And so suddenly scrolling through Instagram and seeing photos, you know,

Christine Zerette: does it actually make all the photos on Instagram gray?

Brenda Stolar: It does. So scrolling through Instagram when you can't see the photos in full color is not as fun.

Christine Zerette: Okay. So, if some of these built-in settings aren't working for someone, let's say they have a little bit of a self-control issue. I'm not speaking about anybody but myself.

Brenda Stolar: Me? [laughter] Yeah.

Christine Zerette: Where you're getting past these sort of built-in controls that you've, you know, set up. What would you advise next?

Brenda Stolar: There are third party apps that you can download that are designed for this specific problem. One of them is Focus Friend. It's really cute. It's like you have this little It looks like a pinto bean and it's like your little friend that likes to knit. And so basically the longer you're off your phone, the longer it can knit.

Brenda Stolar: And if you decide to access an app outside of Focus Friend, then everything unravels. All of their work is gone and they get really sad. And so this plays on our emotions. So, if you're a really empathetic person, then you're going to be like, I can't access Tik Tok right now because he has to keep knitting his little like socks. You know what I mean? There's like a gamification to it. If you want something more zen, forest is another one. That one is similar to focus run, but instead of a a cute little cartoon character, it's like a tree species, and so the tree will grow more and more as you stay off of your phone. And then there's also focus keeper. That's like very old school like the Pomodoro method. So it's like focus sessions.

Christine Zerette: And a Pomodoro it's like a timer, right? It's like 25 minutes of focus and then you can take a break.

Brenda Stolar: Yes. Correct. You do this like little quiz in the beginning. So it can gauge just how [laughter] bad your focus capabilities are. And then it'll you can also though set your own sessions depending on the length that you want. So you can do 15 or 25 and then yeah you'll take like a 5 minute break which is great for someone like me with if I know a task is going to take 2 hours I suddenly get super overwhelmed. But doing it in chunks helps. There is one thing I do want to mention though is that all of these apps are free to download and you can still access those features. They do require a paid subscription though if you want the more advanced features.

Christine Zerette: Let's say that none of these apps sound appealing to you or you just know that you're going to cheat your way out of them. I guess um and you need that extra physical barrier. Let's talk about the brick. We've talked about this on the show before. You have one. you love it. Please explain why this works for you.

Brenda Stolar: Because I need something that will physically lock me out of my phone. The brick has a magnet on the back so it stays on my fridge in my kitchen. And it works for me because being able to physically separate myself from the one thing that unlocks my phone is a game changer in the sense that if I'm sitting there, say, using these screen time features and I pick up my phone and I already have access to the unlock button to these apps, like I can just tap 15 more minutes or ignore for today. That I don't think about, I just do it. to have to think about getting up, going to another room in my apartment, and physically unlocking my phone creates this in between moment where I really have to think about it. Sometimes I'm just really lazy. Like sometimes I just don't want to do it. You know what I mean? But other times it really keeps you in check where you're like, "Oh my god, is it really that important that I have to stop what I'm doing and get up and walk over and unlock it?"

Christine Zerette: It's almost like a walk of shame to your [laughter] fridge, right?

Brenda Stolar: It is. It is. One thing I will say that I have enjoyed about using the brick, as we talked about at the beginning of the episode, I spend the most time on Safari and I brick Safari. The thing that I've noticed is that so many times during the day I'll some question will pop up into my mind. I go to Safari and I try to figure it out, right? And it does not allow me to do that. And so I just have to kind of sit with my thoughts for a little while. And it's kind of nice. It's a nice experience. You know,

Brenda Stolar: Yeah, I will say I'm very chronically online. I love knowing all of like the niche things that are going on and using the brick for the first time. Like my brain was just so clear and it was it was great. I loved it. I noticed that I have to start bricking more and more apps because when I bricked all of like the social media apps, suddenly I found Amazon interesting to browse through. My roommate had to brick her photos app because she found it interesting to browse through. you'll find the craziest things interesting because you don't want to sit with your thoughts. So, yeah, it gets you in the habit of being like, "Okay, it's okay." It forces you to not rely on your phone as much. It really does, which is what we're just trying this whole episode is just trying to get you to be more comfortable with your thoughts without, you know, living on your phone all day.

Christine Zerette: Brenda, this was great. I really enjoyed chatting with you today and we'll have you on again soon.

Brenda Stolar: Yeah, I had so much fun. Thank you.

Christine Zerette: We'll drop links to Brenda's advice in the show notes. The Wirecutter Show is executive produced by Rosie Garin and produced by Abigail Keel. Engineering support from Mattie Maziello and Nick Pitman. Today's episode was mixed by Katherine Anderson. Original music by Dan Powell, Marian Lozano, Rowan Nemoto, Katherine Anderson, and Diane Wong. Cliff Levy is Wirecutter's deputy publisher and general manager. Ben Frumin is Wirecutter's editor-in-chief. I'm Christine Zerette. Thanks for listening.