TL;DR: Don’t overthink your problems, if there’s an attention black hole on your phone, but you still have good reasons to use it a little bit, just get a separate physical device to put it on.
This year a long term relationship ended. A few months later, I felt ready to date again and faced a decision:
I was living in world #1 until the moment of unfortunate clarity when I asked a friend about his eligible female friends. After a pause, he offered: “Oh, [REDACTED] is single!” followed by “Oh but she’s nearly six feet tall, and you’re also not a cowboy which is probably a dealbreaker”.
That sealed it. I needed to get on the apps.
What’s so bad about the apps? Lots of stuff, but for me, one thing: they are black holes of attention. They suck up time and attention in ways that feel bad to me, and I give them more attention than I should. I find that 30 minutes at a time of my day just slip away swiping, and not in effective and intentional ways. They are a distraction.
This post isn’t really about the problems with the apps though. You might read that description and think of Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Reddit, whatever. This post is about one very specific solution to help with any application that makes you feel this way.
If your solution is self-control or screen time limits, I have bad news: You’re not strong enough. I’m certainly not.
Don’t overthink it. If it’s in your pocket all the time, you’ll engage way too much, so KEEP IT OUT OF YOUR POCKET.
On the left is an iPhone 15 Pro. It cost more money than I care to think about and it contains every part of my digital life.
On the right is a refurbished iPhone 12 ($200). This is not a place of honor, and no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here. It has one application on it: Hinge. This is an attention black hole that also occasionally connects me to a charming new person who wants to get to know me.
This phone sits safely on a shelf in my office closet. I check it every now and then, with no specific limits on my use or protocol other than putting it back in my closet to charge when I’m done. I never use Hinge from anywhere else.
Why is this better than app limits or willpower alone? The physical separation creates just enough inconvenience. I don’t want to carry two phones, and my life is on my primary phone anyways. A tiny bit of friction goes a long way.
When I match with someone, I’ll chat on the dating app phone for a bit before exchanging numbers. Most matches don’t care about response times, you can always say “I’ll chat later when I get home.”
DON’T OVERTHINK YOUR PROBLEMS