1. Check the data
Before changing anything, it helps to understand what you're changing. Android has Digital Wellbeing, iOS has Screen Time: both show exactly how many hours you spend in each app, how often you unlock your phone, and what time of night you're still staring at the screen.
The numbers can be uncomfortable. That's the point. Seeing that you spent 3 hours on Instagram last Tuesday won't transform you overnight — but it makes the problem hard to keep ignoring. Admitting how much time you're giving away is the first step.
2. Build screen-free pockets
Psychotherapist Emma Burke calls this wait training — small windows of time when the phone is left behind or switched off. You don't start with a full day: you start with a walk. Then a whole morning. Then, gradually, a full day.
Burke now keeps Sunday as a screen-free day: mobile data off, nature outside the window, WhatsApp messages waiting until Monday. "I feel refreshed at the end of the day," she says. The shift from abstinence as deprivation to disconnection as reward is the heart of this method.
3. Change your lock screen
It's a simple trick — almost too simple — but it works. Replace your lock screen photo with something that represents where you want to be, not where you already are. A photo of Paris if you want to learn French. A photo of yourself in better shape if you want to get back to exercising. Your dog, a place that calms you, something you genuinely love.
Every time you unlock your phone — 80, 100, 150 times a day — that reminder is there. Quiet, non-judgemental, present.
4. Kill the noise
Notifications are the oldest trap in the smartphone playbook: a siren call that pulls you back in the moment you've managed to escape. A work email, an Instagram like, a time-limited discount — everything rings with the same urgency.
The solution is radical in its simplicity: turn off everything non-essential. Keep calls, texts, and direct messages from real people. Everything else — badges, banners, sounds — can go. The silence feels strange at first. Then it feels like freedom.
5. Switch to greyscale
Apps are designed to be visually irresistible. Saturated colours, animations, red notification dots — all calibrated to capture attention. Removing colour is what researcher Marcantonio Spada calls "destimulation" of the device.
Both Android and iOS have a greyscale option in accessibility settings. Try it for a few days: grey Instagram is significantly less magnetic than the full-colour version. The effect fades over time as the brain adjusts — but in the first few weeks, it can make a real difference.
6. Distance is the deterrent
"Physical distancing is extremely important," says Spada. Keeping your phone out of the bedroom at night, away from the table during meals, in a bag rather than a pocket — these small choices reduce how often the screen enters your field of vision without you even reaching for it.
If you need it in the bedroom, keep it at least two or three metres away. If something's truly urgent, it will ring. Everything else can wait.
7. Put a rubber band around it
Low tech, surprisingly effective. A rubber band wrapped around your phone blocks nothing — but it creates that half-second of friction, that small physical resistance, which can be enough to interrupt the automatic unlock-and-scroll reflex. Ridiculous? A bit. Does it work? For many people, yes — at least as a starting point.
8. Use an app to fight apps
It sounds counterintuitive, but there are apps designed to turn the same gamification mechanics of addictive apps back against themselves. BePresent and ScreenZen are among the most recommended: they add friction before opening problem apps, show nudges, and track progress. They don't eliminate the habit — but they make it more conscious.
9. Make unlocking require a real action
The problem with almost every digital solution is that it requires willpower at the exact moment you have the least of it — on the sofa at 11pm, brain looking for something to scroll.
Cura solves this differently. It's an app that blocks the apps you choose — social media, news, anything — and only unlocks them when you physically interact with a small wooden card. The card goes somewhere slightly inconvenient: in the kitchen, on the far side of the bedroom, outside the room. When you want to open Instagram at 11pm, you have to get up, walk over, and tap. That small physical friction is enough to break the automatic loop.
Willpower becomes optional. The system does the work.
Discover Cura Kit →
See how it works →10. Go back to basics
Feature phones — like the revived Nokia 3210 or Doro models — offer calls, texts, and little else. TikTok doesn't exist. Instagram doesn't exist. Notification dependency doesn't exist.
Researcher Spada warns about the "avoidance vs control" risk though: if you're on the milder end of the dependency spectrum, learning to coexist with your smartphone may be more useful than escaping it entirely. There's also a practical question: QR codes, e-tickets, WhatsApp, banking apps — switching to a basic phone means reorganising quite a lot of daily life. Worth being honest with yourself before committing.
11. Try a device designed for disconnection
A middle ground between smartphone and feature phone: devices like TCL NxtPaper have paper-like screens with low blue light and a physical side switch that cuts all notifications and turns everything greyscale. You still have access to essential apps, but the experience is designed not to pull you in.
It's not for everyone, and it requires a purchase. But for people who want a functional smartphone without the addiction-optimised interface, it's a real option.
12. Go cold turkey — but plan the return
A full digital detox — phone locked away, nature, analogue pursuits — is the nuclear option. It works short-term: the brain settles, the pace slows, you remember what it feels like to not be constantly connected.
The problem is coming back. As Spada puts it, a detox only works long-term if you return to "a restructured environment" with "new principles" of phone use. Without that structural change, reverting to old habits is almost inevitable. The detox isn't the solution — it's the opportunity to figure out what the solution is.
There's no single right answer. Most people get the best results by combining approaches: something that reduces notifications, something that creates physical friction, something that fills the time differently.
If you want somewhere concrete to begin, Cura is built for exactly this: app blocking with real physical friction, focus sessions, and AI suggestions that build gradually — like a training programme for your brain.
See how it works