The average American spent 2.5 months on their phone in 2024
pcmag.com
pcmag.com
Boredom is a good thing for the brain.
And, honestly, I must be of the older generation because I find nothing very interesting on my phone. It takes pictures and gives me directions. I'm a lap-topper.
It contains the entire Internet? If you see me on my phone at a bus stop, I’m probably reading a book.
In fact, all the stuff we’ve designed to capture attention is almost the exact opposite of a good use of the internet.
I find it very difficult to queue up good content to read or listen to on a daily basis. And I try. Imagine all the people without the time to discover enough good content.
Good newspapers usually allow you to do that.
There's practically an undoable number of hours of free courses on Coursera, Udemy, Khan Academy, and others. Thousands of hours of interesting material on youtube.
How does the ratio of actually good to not really in the real world compare?
It seems pretty amazing that anyone, anywhere can watch a physics lecture from the multiple top professors at any time.
I have a list of links to read for when I have time to do so. But yeah, if I don’t have anything to do, I prefer just doing nothing than seeking engagement. Social media are a mind killer.
> I find it very difficult to queue up good content to read or listen to on a daily basis.
When I come across something that looks interesting, I add it to the list and stuff accumulates until I go through each link and read the page, usually during my 30 minutes commute. (or not, sometimes it is not as interesting as I thought it would be). For me it works quite well.
Last night I was working through some shader tutorials, for instance, albeit on my laptop (I prefer laptop to phone when possible).
I also playtest one of my games (current one has a mobile version), or brainstorm and take notes for my game designs, or read up on something I want to do with one of my games, or go through my github issues list and sometimes even look at my code repos while I'm killing time while out and about (I mostly don't use my phone when I'm not out, I'll just use my laptop).
I try to remember I have a Kindle app with lots of informative books to read but I do forget about a little too often.
When I was younger, I would program text-based games all the time on my TI graphing calculator. I would even bring that instead of my Game Boy to my grandparents sometimes, because I just wanted to code more of my games.
I do think that capability is lacking on phones. It's technically possible, but the environment (at least on iPhone) is so sandboxed it's difficult to do effectively, or at least it was the last time I tried. Anything you're making on the device directly does not have access to the same capabilities as what you make from a laptop or desktop, and that's a shame.
I'd argue you're holding it wrong. The repository of all human knowledge absolutely does contain numerous "learn about the world" courses in all shapes and forms. HN, arXiv, Wikipedia, parts of YouTube, and dedicated learning platforms abound and each probably has enough content for a lifetime of learning. I agree it's not designed to make this easy, but it's also not particularly hard. Hit "random article" a few times on Wikipedia and you're off to the races.
And it's only explicit knowledge, not tacit knowledge. Nobody learns skills from browsing the Internet.
I've been testing https://brilliant.org/ and like it so far. Its scope is limited to STEM topics, but the thing I like about it is you can set courses to bite sized daily chunks as small as 5 minutes.
Rinse and repeat for anything you're vaguely interested in.
The problem is way too many interesting things to see, not too few.
what do we do now, ask other users for their input? make a poll?
i don't know why HN has this habit of using anecdotes as absolute counter-arguments, makes for uninteresting discussion in my opinion
and the subtext is always the same "A did/didn't happen to me, so then it follows A does/doesn't happen to anyone"
I was challenging your assertion, not making a counter-assertion.
spending 2.5 months doomscrolling or browsing tiktok, on the other hand....
> I think the implication was that it didn't have to be on tiktok. it's a choice that people make. the phone doesn't force them. rejecting the phone entirely isn't some form of virtue or moral purity.
in this particular context "rejecting the phone" means "rejecting tiktok"
no one was concerned about the phone if the vast majority of users were reading books on it
If "the vast majority of users" could "reject the phone", then they could also "reject tiktok".
Social media can cause mental health issues, qnd can lead to addiction to it, but that doesn't mean that using it is a moral failing. And frankly, neither is becoming addicted to heroin a moral failing (though most people would consider it a personal failing since we would dislike being addicted to it), it's a healthcare issue not a morality issue. The only moral failing would be committing offences against other people because of the addiction, eg stealing from somebody to pay for the drugs.
that doesn't negate what I said at all, not striving to keep a healthy body and healthy mind, not working on developing yourself, on elevating yourself, not wanting to become better, IS a moral failing
and certain hedonistic activities, like the social media dopamine dispensers, although they do not hurt other people, do hurt the moral imperative of growing yourself as a person
Whoa. How is it any of your business how I live my life so long as I am not impacting you or society in any way? I'm 72 years old and I spend my time the way I want to spend my time. I don't exercise any longer. And that will almost certainly shorten how much longer I live. How is that any of your business?
I would rank self-actualization, personal growth, as the second rule behind the golden rule, and there are many schools of philosophy where that's the case: aristotelian ethics, kantian ethics, existentialism, etc.
Why should I (or anyone) care where you (or anyone) rank anything?
I'm pretty comfortable with my ranking of things. What someone else thinks about how I decide to live my life is pretty much at the bottom of my ranking board.
Because your actions will impact society. You might get healthcare, paid for by the rest of society, which may or may not be caused by you not exercising. Or it might be caused by you exercising.
The way people raise their kids affects society, or even simply their decision to have or not have a certain number of kids impacts society. Some personal actions can collectively impact society.
We could go on that merry-go-round forever. Just ridiculous.
I understand you may want boredom as a practice, but do you genuinely find the bus stop area more interesting?
you walk around with your laptop in your back pocket all the time like Eminem or something?
Even when you are just looking around IRL, one view will be more interesting than the other, right? But now that got you all doped up on "super interesting" through this teleportation device to all things interesting, everything around you look extremely boring in comparison.
As your adrenaline receptors come back to life you will find that everything around you is really actually quite interesting.
Nothing to do with adrenaline, addiction, doom-scrolling, dopamine or chemical receptors. Millions of people are surrounded by a wasteland of asphalt and machines going 60mph with nothing interesting within sight.
I was also homeless for five years and had to spend times in some of the worst places in the US.
You do not see it because you are desensitized.
You also know nothing about our relationship with phones and such. You just sound like somebody who has an ax to grind.
I am as much of a dopamine junkie as anyone here, but I am perfectly comfortable leaving my phone behind for long stretches and sometimes I’m just sitting at a public transit stop around ads and concrete. Unfortunately people watching, while romanticized as the ultimate fun activity by interesting indie folks in movies, does get old eventually.
Do you really think that's what was being suggested? I assumed they were merely suggesting to not reflexively reach for your phone any time you have a moment of downtime.
You're right though, that's likely what was meant, which I agree with. The hyperbole was unnecessary.
Maybe that is the purpose of these phones?
That is not even close to what I was speaking to. It is just part of the process of waking up and becoming unattached and less dependent and more aware of your surroundings and feeling the suffering so you create the will to change things.
> Instead we bicker about DEI and what genitals someone has under their clothes when they use certain restrooms instead of, you know, a voting and election process that is more representative and accountable.
All of this was brought to you by the internet by the people you complain about below.
> Until there is greater class consciousness and people have more emotional bandwidth to consider things outside what is immediately placed in front of them with instagram/tiktok/corporate news/advertising, I don't think it's going to change much.
Class consciousness starts off line, by helping the poor in your local area. Take a look at what the Black Panthers did and you will get an idea. If people are staring at TikTok it is highly unlikely that are running into this information.
https://rooseveltinstitute.org/blog/how-the-black-panthers-p...
Though commonly associated with the sensational, the Black Panthers conceived of and implemented a wide array of meaningful social programs. The Panthers started free breakfast for school children, with party members cooking every morning for the poor and undernourished kids in their communities. They established the Oakland Community School, which offered adult education and childcare, as well as free medical clinics staffed by well-regarded academic physicians who volunteered a portion of their time. Mary Bassett, former commissioner of health of the city of New York, writes that the Panthers initiated medical research into sickle cell anemia, which was largely ignored prior to their work. They provided plumbing, home maintenance, and even pest control services.
Unless there is already the seed of making change and recognizing what change needs to be made, the idle time isn't really going to help. I suffer plenty in life, I don't need to artificially increase that as some sort of motivation to vote differently or interact with my community differently.
> All of this was brought to you by the internet by the people you complain about below.
Disagreement on social issues has always existed and would also exist even without the internet. I'm not sure what your point is with this comment.
I agree local efforts are great and meaningful. But for large systemic change we need different voting habits.
I hear this adage repeated a lot, but is it true? A quick kagi finds me lots of news articles quoting neuro-scientists, but no actual studies I can see.
If it is, I assume like sleep or vegetables there's a certain amount you should have per day and a point of diminishing returns.
I guess I sort of saw the social-media-in-your-pocket thing coming a long way before it did.
A very professional way of saying you were getting a lot of play? /j
Pre Kindle I'd take around 15 lbs of books with me on trips.
There's a joke in knpins about reading the shampoo bottle on the John. I've done that
I've read the shampoo bottle way too many times.
It was actually incredible to get the visceral reminder of just how ingrained having my phone for distraction was to me. I didn't take any action but sometimes wonder if I should have.
*I had lent my phone to a friend, who was using it to communicate with the person who had found their phone and making recovery/transfer easier... classic?
> Reviews.org surveyed 1,000 Americans 18 years and older with a +/- 4% margin of error and a confidence level of 95%. The survey results were weighted to reflect characteristics of the United States population using available data from the US census.
Absent them explicitly saying otherwise, I think we need to assume that the survey was done of reviews.org visitors. Reviews.org has reviews for exactly three categories of services: internet providers, mobile phone plans and services, and TV and streaming.
Weighting for US demographics isn't going to make this sample very representative—this survey is of people who are browsing reviews for a set of products that most people don't think too hard about, which also happens to be a set of products that is tightly related to screen time use.
That's pretty unlikely. Reviews.org likely engages one of many vendors (like Qualtrics[1]) that will solicit responses online for a survey you design and provide to them through their survey building tool.
[1] https://www.qualtrics.com/research-services/online-sample/
If they wanted us to take their survey seriously they'd have a real methodology section.
I started by eliminating social media accounts, which had an immediate and positive effect on my phone use.
Next, I set hard phone time/day limits: no phone while hiking, no phone while at a social meetup or restaurant, no phone while shopping.
Finally, I focused on what I should use it for and stuck to only that: checking work email when I need to away from a PC (but replies wait until I get to a PC), the odd Googling when I'm away from a PC, scrolling my tech news feeds once per evening for up to 20 minutes, and of course, missed phone calls/texts from friends and family (checked periodically, 1-2 times per day).
And the end result? I'm very happy with my relationship with this non-invasive piece of technology, mainly because I ensured it was non-invasive.
I have yet to install Facebook or Whatsapp or similar. I think it would be the death of me. I spend way too much time on my phone/computer.
I was in a care giving role and felt it couldn't leave my side. Since losing that person, I now rejoice in being able to leave my phone. Heck I didn't turn it on yesterday. And it has been sitting in the kitchen all day today.
The telephone does fill me with existential dread as most communication with me is asking me for something or alerting me to something negative. Perhaps that's an age thing. Whereas the Internet is still pleasurable but a complete and utter time suck.
Sorry for your loss.
It's a false sense of urgency thing. The kids just grow calloused to it, culminating in e.g. completely ignoring the door bell.
I had a friend that decided to essentially go off the grid around 2000-2005, he's my age (gen-z), I remember him showing me a website he was developing with javascript and IE.
Now he's asking me to help with the Google Play / Mac App stuff because it makes no sense to him. It isn't an age thing.
Previously it was gaming (namely consoles), before that was TV, before that was comic books, and so on. Every generation has its "Spends Too Much Time on The Thing(tm)" stereotype.
I feel like we spend way more time on our phones that what we (or they) used to do with consoles, TV, comic books and so on.
people were sick with the flu before, surely the cancer won't kill them, they got over the flu, didn't they
I suspect more people would have bought Apple Vision if it was cheaper/more affordable. I suspect a lot more people would have bought it if it was 1/2 weight at $1000 and didn't require that dangling battery. The future will be people with their phones hooked to their faces.
Decades ago I would come home and crash in front of the TV — watching dreck.
At least in the evening I think the mind needs to disengage, relax. That can be found in watching "Forensic Files" or playing online solitaire or scrolling through BlueSky.
Perhaps reading would be a better substitute though.
You have to start with yourself an be an example. It is an "addiction of sorts" (maybe a very strong habit?), but think of it like telling an alcoholic to just stop drinking.
Like an addiction, you need to get rid of the Pavlovian ringing bells to help you through.
Rule one: Turn off all notifications and turn on battery saver mode.
Rule two: Get off of all social media. I am including HN with this. Delete them, you will be fine. HN is the only place I talk online now and only on my laptop, but its days are numbered for me.
Rule three: Leave your phone behind. Probably the hardest. I started just by leaving it the car when I was shopping, then leaving it home when shopping.When I ma at the coffee shop I leave it in my bag.
Rule four: Do not use your phone at all when you are home. Start by setting time limits and extend them, but no one died stopping cold turkey. I only even use my laptop in the morning to read news
Rule five: Learn to do something else with your hands. Cook, work on your car, clean your house, anything.
Rule six: Be OK with "not knowing" and try to stop searching the internet every time a question pops up in your head. This was very hard for me because of my clinically diagnosed OCD. I found the "checking" my phone was allowing me to do just made my OCD worse in the long run.
I am at the point now where I use my phone so little the battery lasts five days easy with 20% left.
The thought that quitting social media is harder than quitting smoking also helps cement the idea that it is bad for me when I try to dissuade myself from using it
My laptop is essentially a desktop as well. I only use it on a desk in one room.
I never turn to these devices out of boredum. That is the best rule.
Plus, steven black on github has a great host file blocking all kibds of websites.
I still average about 2 hours a day on it. Most of this happens when I'm eating or using the bathroom and would not be productive time anyway. By the metric of this article that's still 1 month of my life per year. Not sure I see this as a huge problem, if I did, I could cut it down even further.
Maybe we should be more concerned about a related figure - the time we spend consuming digital media, which is now pushing 8 hours per day. The phone is a very pervasive vessel for that but when I cut back phone use I found that media consumption on other devices started creeping up so I'm trying to work out ways to avoid that. I think our lives are richer if we create more and consume less.
It honestly decreased my baseline well-being far faster than anything else, even when I'd just try to follow the most insular network of math academics and art people. At least tiktok was vaguely more positive and the occasional gnome footage or afghan giant conspiracy was fun.
Even if many of us old school computer users don’t quite like it phones are the general purpose computing devices for many people. There’s no reason to worry about the generic time spent using them.
I've tried this, but it feels like a big administrative burden, having to think about how long each app should be, when it should be available etc, similar to the feelings I had on Facebook about bureaucratising friendships (who's an "acquiantance", who's a "close friend").
It feels like you have to make so many explicit decisions for digital stuff that was much more fluid before - don't want X to come to a party? Don't phone them.
Wait, what? Has this been your experience? My sense has been the exact opposite: the younger the person the more attached to the phone and the more sense of existential dread when it goes missing.
Eventually I confirmed with the lawyers that I could also take away their phones, and that broke some of them. I mean that I had troops break down in tears in my office when I informed them of the punishment, and some went to extreme lengths to circumvent the punishment and secretly gain access to another phone. (They still had laptops and Wi-Fi, by the way, along with permission to borrow a phone if they needed to make an important call.)
The Army has studied this a bit and found that not allowing troops to have their phones during basic training is a significant obstacle to recruiting right now.
Millennials had it dumped in their lap like GenX and haven’t had time to build “cognitive antibodies” but I think that’s starting to happen
Elders were addicted to TV for similar reason, but as a Xennial I grew up on TV and find it fucking boring.
Teen use of drugs and alcohol, sex is way down compared to prior generations.
It’ll take time and progress can be hampered by avarice of powers that be coughVCcough
Human biology is analog not digital. It’s far more fluid than a machine; one can be a social nut but care for themselves and others because philosophy of proper social etiquette is pretentious phrenology like bullshit. It’ll evolve defenses on its own that corpo won’t be able to anticipate or ignore until it’s too late. And just not giving a fuck to begin with is an option. Not much Sam Altman, PG can do if people just don’t use these stupid things if people just evolve into nonsense discourse but keep stuff on the shelves.
IMO in the US we need to take a minute to live by Tim Leary’s mindset, drop out and get strapped and remind a couple hundred mega rich 8 billion other people don’t actually need them.
Only Watchman will ever be able to police Watchmen https://aeon.co/essays/game-theory-s-cure-for-corruption-mak...
Screen Time on iOS (which Android picked up later) was a response to people being concerned about being on their phones all of the time.
"Uglifying" hacks (mostly using the grayscale filter) are popular too.
Then there are purpose-built devices like the reMarkable and Daylight Computer that tout "focus" as a selling point.
All that said, I don't think we (in the US) are ready for a complete social media cleanse. Lots of people use tricks to reduce their social media consumption (not too dissimilar to quit-smoking tactics, interestingly), but the overall reaction to banning TikTok was overwhelmingly negative. Furthermore, their stats on phone use while driving are actually low; one study actually claimed that 90% of people did this (and my experiences walking and biking around all but confirm this).
Those of us who do not use phones at all we need to engage with these people who are suffering the worst. We need to show them that loneliness can be alleviated by other means.
Please do not say this is all harmless either. The material they are looking at, and behavioral programing they are being subjecting to, is not harmless. I grew up watching old school TV, and I was never able to see anything remotely close to what an 11 year old can see today.
Do I have to? No. Do I always do it? No. But just today at the gym, I used the 30 seconds or so there to start downloading a podcast to listen to during my workout. Every button click takes a couple seconds, pause, wait, etc... Why not stack those non-productive times together?
I feel like this is becoming a more serious problem than people realize.
I also feel like people can’t do tasks quietly, without having a feed of music or podcasts. I see it with my wife and my kids. None of them are able to carry out activities without some audio being steamed to their brain. Most people can’t even work without headphones on, even in a quiet environment.
Most people will say “what’s wrong with that?”, but I feel this is a symptom of some underlying anxiety, we just don’t realize it.
The 'underlying anxiety' might be because there's far more noise in our environments - inside and outside - than there was a couple generations ago? More traffic, bigger cars, leaf blowers, lawn mowers, more airplanes. More people in smaller open plan offices... None of these are really under my control. Wearing head phones to block that stuff out is under my control.
Listening to actual music with words or podcasts while trying to work would, in fact, be worse for me, and I think for many folks. Unsure how people do that, but white noise blocking does help many folks.
Let me add that I am not one of the multi-tasking multi-monthers: the phone says that I had 32 minutes/day of screen time last week.
Watch one ad on youtube?
Many phone apps have completely abused the notification system, transforming it into a slot machine of dopamine. Between this and "engagement" being metric number one in developing mobile apps, this outcome isn't surprising.
(I am militant about what gets to notify me. Most of my apps are denied notification permissions. Any apps that begin to spam me get denied as well. I also do inbox zero, so any emails I get are either dealt with in the moment or are treated as a todo for later.)
Ironically, as much as I loved smartphones and the iPhone in their prime, I'm thinking about going back to separate simple devices.
I've always been a "simple" phone user (email, reading stuff online, camera/video, no social media, no games,no YouTube). Phones and tablets are becoming even more consumption focused, and it's clear that market forces are leaving people like me in the dust. (I'm typing this on an eInk Boox Go that I rooted, debloated and firewalled; sucks for "typical phone shit" but is amazing for reading.)
Small phones are all but extinct (unless you count the iPhone 13 mini that Apple discontinued, which I had and I absolutely LOVED). Again, market forces leave us simple folk behind. I'm broken for NOT wanting a 6.3" slate that can hit 2000 lumens on a bright day that requires a case because the titanium is too slippery.
What I would LOVE is a small Kaleido eInk phone that runs Android on a mid-tier SoC. Rooted and debloated; no assistants or AI (like you described).
I would use eLauncher to make a really simple launcher with the names of the apps I use (like I do on my BOOX) and Tasker to automate common tasks. (I want a simple interface so I can move around quickly and move on with my lifem, but have no problem with complexity so long as it's within my control. I'm a heavy user of Shortcuts, as terrible as that software is.) Since I already carry a fanny pack around everyday, I would just use a small mirror less SLR for point and shoot stuff like the Canon EOS M300.
Our phones replaced numerous different devices. All the time we used to spend watching TV, listening to music, reading books, getting the news, playing games, talking to friends is now done on our phones.
As a Pixel user, the first attempt in early 2023 was rough as the 1st gen Pixel watch had growing pains. I gave up on it but have recently started looking into this approach again. Hopefully the latest updates to WearOS will show an improvement, especially in battery life.
I would have considered switching to Apple, but from what I've seen, there is no support for responding to Signal messages via the iWatch. That's critical functionality for me.
If the technology pans out and the strategy is a success, then my comments here on HN will be significantly less in 2025.
Yes, there is? Through dictation
The fact this article has "Best cell phone plans" in the middle of it tells me NO.
Reviews.org surveyed 1,000 Americans 18 years and older with a +/- 4% margin of error and a confidence level of 95%. The survey results were weighted to reflect characteristics of the United States population using available data from the US census. Respondents were asked to refer to their phone’s screen time report to determine the average number of times per day they check their phones, in addition to how much time in total they spend on their phones per day.> If you’re like one of the Americans surveyed by Reviews.org, this is one of 205 times today that you’ll be checking the device in your hand. To spare you opening the calculator app, that’s about once every five minutes you are awake or two and a half full months out of your year.
That just can't be true. First of all, it assumes 1 minute of spending at the phone, every of those 1 times per 5 minutes. Totalling 5 hours a day. On average for everybody. I'm sure there are some outliers like that, but there are tons of people out there for whom there is no way they would get even close.
To top it off, their sample was surely neither random nor representative. Of course you get heavily biased data if you are asking a tech crowd.
I stopped reading at this point. Garbage in, garbage put, i.e. whatever conclusion they were eventually drawing was not based on actual facts.
The watch can't have a cellular plan of its own. It must be associated with the plan that's on the iPhone it's tethered to. If you use a dummy iPhone for this purpose, then the SIM for your primary number needs to be on that phone.
Can one just dictate the error margin on a survey now?
It's good to be truly skeptical, but to be completely contrary is a mental trap.
With respect to statistics and online surveys, I'm not even skeptical but outright cynical. Calculating the margin of error with a standard deviation only works for representative samples, which reviews.org most likely is not able to provide. Adding these percentages and terms to the report gives a false sense of reliability, which annoys me.
Still, I should probably not have resorted to sarcasm. My apologies for that.
good bye deep thoughts
good bye creativity
good bye critical thinking
turns out soma isn't a pill, but a screen
We had a defining realisation last year when we found a Youtube channel where a guy cleans carpets. I found it more nutritionally satisfying than 99% of programming on the TV. It was and is totally eye-opening. I have a similar draw to nature. I can watch wild animals doing their thing. And get some entertainment with curtain twitching. I think it's just that inherent human thing - watching.
I do like reading. The minutes I do this are ever dwindling through competition for my idle brain.
I just opened screen time in my iPhone, checked devices for phone, selected weekly tab, and flipped back last few weeks to get average of 42 hours per week, with 168 hours in a week puts me at 25% for December.
I’m apparently above average!
The other 73% aren't admitting it. When I've driven down the street, seeing someone not on their phone is a rarity.
The funniest is when the lights go green and a large gap opens up in the traffic because someone has got sucked into their phone and forgot they were driving. Remarkably common.
Being able to be bored and have those creative thoughts enter is for sure a useful thing. I'd argue the more important thing is being comfortable with silence/boredom. Being able to sit in a meeting and let awkward silence stew; or make a sales pitch and quietly let the gears turn, is a super power. If you're the one at the table better with silence, you have an inherent advantage.
Context: I'd put myself in the very low phone usage category but I still use my phone far more than I'd like. I pretty much just check email/text, HN, a bit of news, and occasionally doom scroll reddit. I'm also a developer turned exec/sales guy.
nobody complains when you're a nerd spending 9 months a year on your laptop.
HN delivering that steady stream of Sunday ragebait as always
Consider: Some devices are consume-only (e.g. Kindle, original iPod); some devices are consume-heavy, create-light (modern iPhone or Android smartphones); some devices are consume-light, create-heavy (modern programmer laptops); some devices are create-only (e.g. typewriters, or modern alternative experiments like Freewrite).
If you only use the consume-only or consume-heavy devices, you're not "computing" in any creative sense. In the same way, you usually aren't writing in any creative sense if you only carry books (or a Kindle) in your backpack and read all day.
Most people spend weeks or months per year "consuming content with a computing device" while not creating a single thing with that computing device. Some of that is communication, like text and group chat messages. But quite a lot of it is short-form content that is passively delivered to eyeballs and ears.
Either way, this isn't creative computing. It may not even be deep content consumption. The typical and popular content doesn't resemble books. There is a widespread and population-wide decline in deep reading as short-form video rises and app notifications flit users from smartphone app to app. You have to be very intentional to even wrangle a smartphone media diet that leaves the space for deep reading. To escape the trap, most find the need to put the smartphone away and pick up a device with different affordances (a Kindle to deep read, or a laptop to code or write, as examples).
Even if you manage to escape attention farming, due to the design of smartphones as omnipresent devices (on-screen keyboards, touch screens, cellular data plans), creativity will still usually be out of the question for the vast majority of users. For that, you usually need to simply put the smartphone away. I personally find that to do creative computing I need a device with a physical keyboard, a mouse-equivalent, and, optionally: a speedy wired/wifi connection and a large monitor on a comfortable desk in a quiet workspace.
See also "Putting Your Media on a Diet":
https://amontalenti.com/2024/01/31/media-diet
And also "The smartphone app audit":