"Just put your phone away" doesn't work when your job, your MoMo and your family group chat all live on it. You don't need to unplug completely. You need a few boundaries that run themselves.
1. Make the bedroom phone-free
- → Charge your phone outside the bedroom or across the room.
- → Use a cheap battery alarm clock from the market instead of the phone alarm.
- → Need to be reachable at night? Use Do Not Disturb and allow only chosen contacts to ring.
2. Let Focus modes do the work
→ Android: Settings → Digital Wellbeing → Focus mode. Choose distracting apps to pause during set hours.
→ Laptop: turn off pop-up notifications for email and chat, and check them at set times instead.
3. Make the phone less tempting
- → Grayscale works. Studies found that switching phones to black-and-white cut daily use by roughly 20 to 50 minutes. iPhone: Settings → Accessibility → Display & Text Size → Color Filters → Grayscale. Android: Digital Wellbeing → Bedtime mode → Grayscale (or Color correction in Accessibility).
- → iPhone shortcut: in the Shortcuts app, create an automation that turns on grayscale when you open a chosen app, such as TikTok.
- → Move distracting apps off your home screen into a folder.
- → This is "environment design" — making the good habit easy and the bad one harder — explained well in James Clear's book Atomic Habits.
4. Take real breaks
A break spent scrolling isn't much of a break. A 2016 study of about 400 office workers in South Korea (Computers in Human Behavior) found that people who used their phones during breaks felt less refreshed than those who took phone-free breaks.
→ Follow the 20-20-20 rule for your eyes: every 20 minutes, look 20 feet (6 metres) away for 20 seconds.
→ Eat lunch away from the screen when you can.
5. Check your numbers once a week
Screen Time (iPhone) and Digital Wellbeing (Android) show which apps take your time. Look once a week, pick one app to cut down, and set an app timer for it.
Paid gadgets are optional
Blocking apps like Opal and sleep trackers like the Oura Ring or Whoop can help some people, but none of them is needed. The free settings above do most of the work.
More: digital wellness without giving up your devices, and children and screens: what the research says.
About this guide
This guide was rewritten in November 2026 after a fact-check; every study and figure has been checked against its original source. Written by Edmund A. and reviewed by the TechTrendi editorial team. Last reviewed: November 2026. Prices are US prices unless stated, and apps and settings change — if something here no longer matches, tell us at [email protected].