The 24 Best Things I've Learned From a Year of Studying Screen Habits

Welcome to The Purpose Memo, a newsletter where I give you ideas for wrestling your life back from digital technology and living a principled life. 

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Read time: 14 minutes

From the outside, things were going wonderfully.

I graduated college with a perfect GPA, landed a job at an excellent company, married the girl of my dreams, got promoted three times in my first three years, and welcomed a trio of beautiful children into the world.

This is the version of my life everyone saw:

But a deep struggle was lurking beneath the surface of my well-to-do exterior.

I was chronically addicted to screens.

Despite the discipline applied to the other domains of my life, this seemed an impenetrable stronghold.

(I later discovered that my screen time numbers were about average for an American adult. This thoroughly disturbed me.)

I still feel a mixture of anger and sadness when I look at these pictures:

Side Note: All of these pictures were taken by my wife, none of them with the intention of “catching” me on my phone. Each was a candid photo she snapped without paying any mind to what I was doing. If this many instances were caught on camera accidentally, how many more were not?

Something had to change. So I made a decision—I had to figure this out.

In January of 2025, I set out to learn everything there is to know about screen time habits.

The result: my screen time dropped by 75%, and every part of my life improved.

Today, I’m sharing the 24 best things I’ve learned along the way.

Perhaps there is one in here for you.

1) Keep your phone out of your room at night.

I recently had a conversation with someone who was struggling with excessive doomscrolling. I asked if they kept their phone in their room at night. They replied, “Of course, it’s my clock.” My advice: buy a $10 alarm clock and start leaving your phone in the kitchen.

2) Avoid screen stacking. 

I don’t have X anymore, but I’ve never forgotten this tweet:

If you’re always using multiple screens, it leads to something called “continuous partial attention,” which disrupts focus, causes anxiety, and worsens sleep (among other things).

3) Stopping cues are important. 

50 years ago, when you finished reading the newspaper, you had two options: read it again or put it down. Physical media has an important feature called a stopping cue, which is a fancy way of describing a natural endpoint. Social media companies have created “infinite scroll” by removing all stopping cues in order to keep you on for as long as possible. Netflix is no different—the countdown for the next episode seems to start before the current one finishes. Choose media that has stopping cues, or find a way to manually create them.

4) Prioritize the non-algorithmic internet. 

An algorithm is the most powerful tool in the addictive platform toolkit. It learns what content you’ll linger on and continually serves you more of that genre (irrespective of quality). But there are places on the internet (like this email, for example) where algorithms don’t exist. You can also remove algorithmic features with browser extensions like Unhook YouTube and News Feed Eradicator.

This is what my screen looks like when I click on a YouTube video:

No enticing “recommended” videos on the righthand side, or mindless comments underneath. I also use LinkedIn for professional purposes, but can avoid the News Feed altogether:

5) Doom scrolling ≠ rest. 

Social media companies want you to believe that scrolling for an hour is restful. But the short-term relaxation is quickly replaced with worsening mental health and a decline in energy, which leads to more tiredness and the start of a negative cycle that is difficult to escape. You’re tired. You scroll. It makes you more tired. You scroll some more.

6) Excessive phone usage has both primary and secondary harms.

You should be aware of the ways your phone use is directly harming you, but that’s not the full story. There are so many other ways you could be using your precious time.

7) Social media is ultra-processed content.

Ultra-processed food is low quality, cheap, addictive and bad for your health. Similarly, ultra-processed content is low quality, cheap, addictive, and bad for your health. A TikTok dance is an Oreo for your brain.

8) Elimination is easier than moderation.

Your willpower is a muscle. Studies show that you’re continually fighting desires throughout your day, which means your willpower muscle can quickly become fatigued. You can conserve your resistive energy by removing the option altogether.

9) You can be successful without social media. 

Warren Buffett. Jennifer Lawrence. Christopher Nolan. Scarlett Johansson. George Clooney. None of these people have social media. And it’s not just celebrities—plenty of Fortune 500 CEOs don’t have accounts (or aren’t active). Success does not require an active social media presence.

10) Removing social media from your phone is a screen time cheat code.

The always-on-you digital appendage of your phone, armed with social media, is the lethal duo that’s likely responsible for most of your screen time. If you commit to separating these two, you’ll experience immediate progress.

11) You are always underestimating your screen time.

Few people know their average screen time on a week-to-week basis. For iPhone users, you can see your daily average screen time by going to your settings and searching for the “Screen Time” tab. My screen time used to be around 6 hours, which is only about 30 minutes more than the national average. Using a conservative estimate for how many years I have left to live, that would put my current-run-rate lifetime-total screen time at 91,250 hours… or 10.5 years. Today, my screen time is around 90 minutes/day. That’s a difference of 70,000 hours over the remainder of my life, which is 8 years of total time.

Hint: If you think your numbers are skewed, you can click into the data and see your usage by each individual app.

12) Stop talking when someone looks at their phone.

Social etiquette we can all adopt: if someone starts reading something on their phone or Apple Watch during a conversation with you, stop talking. Face-to-face interactions should be treated as sacred.

13) Screens rob you of autonomy.

There’s a strange dynamic that happens as you start fighting back against the impulse to check your phone: you feel continually drawn in, seemingly against your will. The simple explanation for this is that these tools have far outgrown the roles in which they were originally promised to fill. Your screen-filled surroundings create a sense of lost control that can only be regained with a complete overhaul of your habits.

14) Your attention has been stolen.

Your attention makes these companies money. Unsurprisingly, they are maximally effective at keeping it (and getting it back when they lose it). Don’t beat yourself up too much—your psychology has been hacked and you aren’t alone. But do fight back.

15) Eliminate as many notifications as possible. And then some more. 

Every notification is like a teleportation machine: it takes you away from where your feet are and transports you to some other mental place. If you limit your notifications—99% of which are not time sensitive—you can enjoy simply being where you are.

16) Follow the 1-1-1 Rule.

The 1-1-1 rule says you should put your phone away for:

Easy to remember. Hard to implement. You can do it.

17) Relationships > Convenience.

Don’t immediately use AI to solve a problem that a human can help you with. You need more human-to-human connection than human-machine interaction.

18) Treat technology like the Amish.

Be cautious with your adoption of technology. Instead of adopting a new technology right away, consider the second and third order effects. Once you know what you’ll gain from adopting a new technology, you must force yourself to consider what you might lose.

19) Buy a casual, everyday watch.

If the device you use to check the time can also notify you about a dozen different things, you’re at risk of being distracted with every glance. You will probably see a notification that triggers a thought about something else, which prompts you to go into a specific app, which then reminds you of a task you needed to do on another app, and so on. Thus, a two-second time check turns into 5-minutes of unnecessary mental clutter.

(I started wearing this Casio around the house and was shocked at how long it took for me to stop instinctively reaching for my phone to see the time.)

20) Carry a pocket notebook (and pen).

I’ve been a faithful pocket notebook carrier for years. My main uses:

1 - Jotting down ideas or questions
2 - Transcribing interesting quotes
3 - Storing miscellaneous things to remember

If you want to reduce your screen time, you’ll need to get comfortable spending extended amounts of time away from your phone. A pocket notebook is your ticket to that separation. It’s hard to stay away from your phone when you’re consistently pulling it back out to send a quick text or jotting something down to remember later. When you have a pocket journal, you can write it all down and keep your head clear.

21) Use an analog to-do list. 

In 2025, the average knowledge worker received 117 emails and 153 direct messages per day, for a total of 270 interruptions. That’s one interruption every 106 seconds. With all of these messages living in the digital world, you’ll be more productive if you keep your to-do list in the physical world.

22) Your brain thrives in silence.

There’s a network in your brain called the Default Mode Network (DMN). The DMN helps support creativity, process memories, and plan for the future. In other words, it helps solve problems. A few weeks ago, I had developed a habit of listening to podcasts during every possible moment of silence (walks, chores, taking a shower, etc). When I finally decided to give my brain a break from the constant inputs, I started coming up with solutions to problems I hadn’t been able to solve prior.

23) Trading 20 minutes of reading for 20 minutes of scrolling will radically change your life.

Reading for leisure is on a scary, rapid decline. We’re playing a dangerous game with our intelligence; reading is an irreplaceable element of our cognitive development. The ever-increasing use of our digital devices is occurring at the expense of our reading habits. Start trading a little scrolling for a little reading and your life will change.

24) The most important question of your life: Who am I becoming?

The journey to solve the screen time problem in my life began because of a single epiphany: I didn’t like the person I was becoming. I was never better off because of the time I spent on my phone, TV, or computer. It’s the question I ask myself again and again, and it’s the question that keeps me grounded.

So I ask you: Who are you becoming?

After all, the only thing you truly get out of this life is the person you become.

Relish the becoming. Be the person your family, friends, and community need you to be.

I’m in your corner.

Thanks for reading! If any of these resonated with you, I’d love to hear which ones.

Reply to this email (or use the comment section on the web version) with your favorites. I’m often surprised at the ones people find most helpful.

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See you next week.

PW