Rutger Bregman, Josie Long, Michael Rosen, Meera Sodha and others on what they are no longer wasting their time on
Rutger Bregman, author
For years, I told myself I could manage my smartphone use. I tried the usual tricks: switching off notifications, deleting addictive apps, moving icons around, greyscale mode. None of it worked. Without notifications, I just checked more to see if something had happened. When I deleted apps, I used the browser instead. And when I deleted that … I would eventually reinstall everything in a weak moment. (Which usually meant spending even more time on my phone as I had to log in everywhere again.)
It slowly dawned on me that, vis-a-vis the smartphone, we cannot pretend to be fully rational adults with free will. I was addicted, of course. And if a system is designed to hijack your attention, the solution isn’t more heroic self-discipline. Ideally, big tech would be regulated: dopamine taxes, limits on algorithmic addictiveness, the whole package. But until that world exists, I needed a personal version of structural change: parental controls.
So I deleted the addictive apps again, marched over to my wife, and asked her to set a passcode. And crucially, I asked her to block the browser, too. That sounds extreme for many, but it’s the key step. Of course, I kept the useful non-addictive apps such as Maps and Photos, but removed all the infinite-scroll dopamine traps.
