to decrease phone/pc screen time usage, you can cut off:
- social media that provoke immediate doomscrolling: instagram, tiktok, youtube shorts;
- social media fueled by rage-baits: tumblr, twitter/x, reddit;
- social media that presents itself as "better" than others: neocities feed, federated microblogging services, bluesky;
- subscription-based entertainment: disney+, netflix, primevideo, hulu;
- overly active servers or closed spaces: discord, telegram channels;
- doomscroll-inducing e-commerce sites: amazon, aliexpress, temu;
will this reduce your fun in your daily life?
no. it will make you realize how much time you could spend doing other things offline and off the phone/pc. bonus points if your job already involves interacting with a screen.
do you want to stay in touch with certain people?
- make an account on [platform] and follow them alone;
- e-mail them;
- subscribe to rss feeds;
what if you don't have friends to begin with?
make some and then cut everything else off. keep in touch through messaging, calls, irl meetings;
what if you still want to share content for others and yourself?
make a website.
- keep messaging alternatives (signal, sms, email);
- use youtube and correlates for music (not youtube music). after some days your feed will only be music and cut off unnecessary essay content;
- find manual hobbies. build something useful for yourself;
- practice slow information retrieval, unless it's the news. obviously, don't trust state news outlets.
- browse and bookmark a few blogs that update every once in a while;
- in case of relapsing, delete after 12h.
- don't delete every social media at once. start with one every few days.
- practice journaling and keeping physical notes;
- if you're a hobbyist artist, draw traditionally with a decent light source.