The notification flashes up on your phone and you feel a little bit sick: your weekly screentime report is here, and the results are nauseating reading.

It doesn’t matter how often we’re reminded that spending hours each day staring at screens isn’t good for us, or how much we might try to read more books, meditate or do anything other than the aforementioned staring at screens – our time spent immersed in the internet all too often seems to run away from us. It feels unconscious; something that’s not really in our control.

Whether it’s the new year mood or the constant news cycle that never lets up, it would seem lots of us are looking for ways to reduce the amount of time we spend staring at our phone. According to Google trend data, the search term ‘how to reduce screentime’ has seen a 9,900% increase in the past seven days.

Of course, we’re not suggesting that you go entirely phone-free and live in the woods, but it would be nice to feel a tad more on top of where our time goes, especially when it feels like we have to constantly stay up to date with the constant news cycle.

But how do we do that? How do we start to wrestle back control of our screen use? We asked Kyle Taylor, the author of The Little Black Book Of Social Media, for his practical tips. 

“It is getting harder to keep technology and the digital world out of more and more aspects of our lives,” Taylor tells Stylist. “Social media no longer feels like an option but instead a necessity. From staying in touch with friends to managing small businesses and discovering new music, social media can feel increasingly like an extension of our offline existence rather than a separate space altogether. 

“It’s more important than ever to think practically about how we can maintain control of our digital lives and effectively manage our screen time.”

“First, plan out your social media usage for the day,” Taylor recommends. “If you use a calendar tool, schedule it in just like work meetings or dinner with friends.”

Why do this? Because it reframes screentime, going from something you do at any point during the day when the urge pops into your head, to an act you plan in. This is the first step towards being more conscious of when you pick up your phone. 

If there are times for using social media, that means there are times you are absolutely not using social media. If you know, for example, that your scrolling window is between 5pm and 6pm, if you open up Twitter at 9am, you know you’ve gone wrong. 

We’ve all done it. You’re working yourself up to getting out of bed, and decide to reach for your phone… just for a quick scan of the news, you tell yourself. And maybe you’ll check Instagram while you’re at it. Just a few scrolls, as you don’t really have to get up for another few minutes. 

We probably don’t have to tell you that this is a truly terrible way to start your day. You know this. So stop doing it. Tell yourself that you have an absolute ban for using your phone when you’re in bed, and that the first half an hour of your day is yours: how do you want to use it?

“Avoid looking at social media first thing in the morning when the activities of everyone else in the world can frame how you feel about and approach your day,” Taylor notes. “Another no-no time for social media use is if you wake up in the middle of the night. You never know what you’ll see or what emotions (like anxiety) that might bring up. Plus, that blue light from the screen will make it more difficult to fall back asleep. 

“Ideally, get an old-school alarm clock and leave your phone in another room.”

On that note, along with marking out places (like your bed) that you don’t use your phone, identify windows of time that you don’t. Maybe that’s pre-10am every day, or all day on a Sunday. Have some deliberate, scheduled time without screens to remind yourself that this is doable; to weaken that automatic urge to pick up your phone or open your laptop.

It’s helpful to schedule in something else to do during these times, so you’re not bored and aimless (a headspace that’s ripe for giving in to the screen urge). Perhaps you’ll try forest bathing, and leave your phone at home, or you could get so immersed in a DIY project that you don’t even think about the internet. 

“Most phones now come with empowerment tools that allow you to set time limits for different apps,” Taylor explains. “Give them a try in a realistic way, with a plan to reduce the time by a few minutes each week. This will help avoid the hypnotising effect of the endless scrolling that can happen where all of a sudden, it has been an hour, and you have no idea where the time went.”

Plus, the web browsers for social media sites are often much clunkier than the apps, making them less fun to use. Taylor says that as a result, web browsers “are less addictive than the apps themselves”.

Ever find yourself in an endless loop of exhausting one form of social media, going to another, then another, then flicking back to the first one again? Same here. And often, we’re not properly using or enjoying some of the second-choice apps in that cycle. We’re just using them to pass the time until our first-choice app has some fresh content. 

So rather than immediately trying to ditch your favourite social media, why not reduce your use of the ones you aren’t getting much from?

“You can also try to reduce the overall number of platforms you use but do this in a gentle way,” Taylor suggests. “Start by cutting out or reducing your usage of one platform at a time, which might help you pinpoint which one or two are most useful for what you’re aiming to get out of social media.”

Too often, we excuse endless social media scrolling by saying we’re staying in touch with our pals. Sometimes that might be true, and it’s absolutely the case that you can make friends over the internet. But in a lot of cases, what we’re doing is the junk food equivalent of social connection – and we come away from our scrolling sinkholes feeling even hungrier for social bonding. 

When you have the urge to go on social media, then, it’s worth asking yourself if there’s a better, more nourishing form of socialising that you want instead. 

“When possible, use direct messaging tools to share information and pictures with loved ones,” recommends Taylor. “This person-to-person experience is not only more personal, its more reliable in terms of what you might come across, helping us manage our emotional response to social media as well as take control of our digital lives.”

Images: Getty; Unsplash

This article was originally published in 2023 and has been updated throughout.