February 24, 2025, by Laura Nicholson

Strategies to Reduce Screen Time: Disconnect to Reconnect

Strategies to reduce screen time

National Unplugging Day takes place on the first Friday of March; it’s a day to disconnect from technology and reconnect with the world around us. Whilst many of us are well aware of the benefits of taking a break from our screens—such as reduced stress, improved relationships, and increased physical activity—many of us still struggle to cut back. Recognising that complete unplugging may be impractical in many people’s lines of work or study, we’ve explored ways we can all take small steps towards reducing screen time. Thus, providing a chance to gradually move towards creating a much healthier balance between technology use and our general well-being.

Screen time monitoring

Many Apple and Android smartphones have built-in features to track and limit screen time. This allows users to monitor their device usage, set time limits for apps, and schedule downtime. I activated this on my phone and find it really interesting, and occasionally slightly horrifying, how much time I have actually spent on some apps. Horrifying because when I sit and think about it, I can’t actually remember the contents of any of the 3 hours of apparent scrolling that I did on that site. However, at the same time, although my phone is clearly telling me I am mindlessly scrolling each week, is this screen time monitoring actually helping me to reduce my time with technology? Honestly, no. I read the report and then quickly forgot about it. I guess for me it just isn’t motivating enough for me to change my habits.

Have an app Spring clean

This point follows the premise that if you reduce the prominence of apps, then the less likely you are to be distracted by them. My desktop is absolutely littered with icons, so I set to work putting everything into folders so that the first thing I see when I log in each day is a nice, tidy screen. I did the same with my phone. I had about 6 pages of various apps, some of which I barely, if ever, use. So, I set about deleting ones I haven’t accessed in the last 3 months and putting the rest into folders.

Such a simple strategy, but oh my, it really is very effective. I no longer feel like I need to click and check on half the apps I used to because I am no longer seeing them popping up each day, and surprise, surprise, I haven’t missed anything by not accessing them. So, if reducing distractions is what you’re after, this is worth a go.

Manage and control notifications

This one is key. If a notification pops up on my phone, I am likely to just click on it out of curiosity, and 9/10 it could have waited until later or was of no interest at all. Switching to silent helps, but turning off most app notifications altogether does really help. I also have a fair few friends that work in different time zones from me, and I’m not just talking about being overseas. Some of my nearest and dearest either don’t switch off or start much earlier than me each day, so WhatsApp messages would often ping at 11 at night or 5.45 in the morning. Not being someone who copes well with sleep disturbance, I found that setting up a ‘Do Not Disturb’ on my phone has been fantastic. Now I put my phone down at 9pm, and nothing will come through to me until 7am—perfect!

Grow a forest

I know, it sounds weird, doesn’t it? But I gave it a go. ‘Forest’ is an app that you can download to your phone, and it is designed to encourage you to not pick up your phone for a set length of time. So, you set a time in the app for, say, half an hour, and then during this time a tree will begin to grow on the phone.

If you leave the phone without accessing other apps for the set time, then you have a tree that you can plant in your very own virtual forest. But if you disturb the tree and end up accessing the phone before the time is up, then you won’t get your fully grown tree. It was quite fun for the first few times, and I liked how you could choose to grow different types of trees and plants, but it was really difficult.

This app really makes you realise just how many times you reach for your phone, and not just to mindlessly scroll. Whilst my phone was there merrily growing a tree, I needed a calculator—but this was on my phone, meeting notes—again, on my phone, the calendar—on my phone… It seems everything is now on my phone. So, a good app, but now we’ve moved away from physical entities such as a pocket calculator or diary; it is sadly really tricky to not use a phone. I think this would probably work in a different scenario, such as putting your phone down for an hour whilst you have lunch, but trying to do it whilst also juggling everyday tasks was tricky. Needless to say, my ‘Forest’ is a little sparse!

Pocket

So this next suggestion is quite good in terms of time management. I often spend some time scrolling through research articles and will dip in and out of them throughout the day. Pocket lets me collect articles, links, and videos to read or watch at another time. I found it much better to dedicate a set time to read through these together, rather than whenever I got a spare moment, and it does mean that I’m not quite so permanently connected.

Using AI to summarise the news

I like to read through the news each morning just to keep up-to-date with what’s happening around the world. What I do now is get AI to summarise the news headlines from around the world, as opposed to me scrolling through all the content myself. Something like Perplexity works well for this, as it provides the information sources and just seems to be a little more interesting in the way it summarises everything. Of course there may be inaccuracies, but I’m not sure that ‘news’ and ‘accuracy’ always go hand in hand anyway, so it’s always best to check the source regardless.

Using AI to summarise has worked for me, on one level. It’s freed up an extra 15 minutes each morning, allowing me to start my day doing something other than staring at a screen. While I’ve regained some precious time, I must admit it often gets spent on less glamorous tasks—like washing or cleaning. I’m still deciding which one is the lesser evil!

Conclusion

There we have it! We’ve explored a variety of strategies to help reduce our constant connection with technology. While some methods may be more feasible than others, they are all worth considering to find what works best for you. By implementing even small changes, we can all begin to reap the benefits of a healthier balance between technology use and personal well-being. As we move forward from National Unplugging Day, we encourage you to continue exploring these strategies and discovering new ways to manage your screen time effectively.

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