Ten Small Phone Changes That Cut Screen Time: What a Trial Found

Most advice for using your phone less is a single trick. A team at McGill University in Montreal tested what happens when people pick their own combination from a menu of ten, and compared it with the tool most phones already have: a screen time report.

What the researchers did

The study, by Olson and colleagues, was published online in the International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction in 2022, and both of its experiments were registered in advance. Participants, mostly students aged 18 to 34 with iPhones, were recruited through social media ads and the university's participant pool.

The intervention was a list of ten "nudges," small changes to the phone or its surroundings, which an experimenter walked each person through in about ten minutes:

1. Turn off non-essential notifications.
2. Keep the phone silent, face down and out of reach when not in use.
3. Unlock with a passcode instead of Face ID or Touch ID.
4. Keep it silent and across the room at bedtime.
5. Lower the brightness, switch to grayscale and turn on Night Shift.
6. Hide social media and email apps in a folder off the home screen, or delete them.
7. Do on a computer what can be done on a computer.
8. Tell family and friends you'll reply less often unless they call.
9. Leave the phone at home when you don't need it.
10. Use the phone as little as possible.

People chose which ones to follow and how closely. In the first study, 51 people followed them for two weeks, with no comparison group. In the second, 70 people were randomly assigned either to the intervention or to a control group that only turned on screen time tracking.

What they found

Screen time fell by about an hour a day. In the first study, daily use dropped from 4.67 to 3.40 hours. In the randomized study, the intervention group's screen time fell by 57 minutes a day, against 11 minutes for the group that only tracked it, and their time on social networking fell by 16 minutes while the control group's rose by 8.

Problematic use returned to normal levels. On a standard smartphone addiction scale, the intervention group's scores fell by 5.5 points, against 0.6 in the control group, and stayed at normal levels for at least six weeks.

Sleep improved. In the randomized study, sleep quality rose by 1.2 points on a 10-point scale in the intervention group and slipped slightly in the control group, a gain that lasted at least six weeks while the gap narrowed. The first study had found little change in sleep.

Mood and depression were mixed. Depressive symptoms fell in the first study, but in the randomized one both groups improved about equally, so the intervention can't take the credit.

People kept most of the changes. Two weeks in, they were following about seven of the ten, and still more than five after six weeks. Turning off notifications was the easiest to keep; grayscale and leaving the phone at home were the hardest. The freed-up time went mostly to studying or work, hobbies such as cooking, and friends and family. The one downside people reported was some anxiety about missing out on conversations.

What the study can't tell you

Because everyone chose their own mix, the study can't say which changes did the work. Its exploratory analysis pointed to fewer notifications, an intention to use the phone less and the display changes, but that is a clue, not a test.

The samples were small and mostly students. The randomized study ended early when the university closed for the COVID-19 pandemic, with 70 participants rather than the planned 80, and it counted only people who followed at least five of the strategies. Its two groups also started with different amounts of screen time despite the random assignment, which the authors say could have pushed the results either way. Screen time came from screenshots of the phone's own report.

What it means for your phone

The striking result is how much a ten-minute setup did compared with watching your numbers: tracking alone barely moved them. Several of the changes are "set and forget," which may be why people kept them.

Start with the easiest: notifications, a folder for your feed apps, the phone across the room at night. When the habit needs more than a nudge, a limit that holds is the next step: Unrotten gives the apps you choose a daily limit with Less scrolling and locks them with Apple's Screen Time shield once it's used up. For more ways to break the habit, read our guide to phone addiction.