Smartphone Nation by Kaitlyn Regehr

Author:Kaitlyn Regehr [Regehr, Kaitlyn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2025-04-04T17:00:00+00:00

WHAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT

Things you can do to mitigate your device usage

+ Decide your max. Set a daily time limit for your most frequently used apps and stick to it. You can use your devices’ limits (I’ll get to these in a minute) to put these limits in place.

+ Stop pushing me. Turn off push notifications which draw your attention to certain apps. At the same time, think about who you do want to hear from and adjust your settings so that you always get notifications from the people you want to hear from but not those you don’t. You can even assign different ringtones to different people to aid with this.

+ Greyscale. You can greyscale your phone (see Chapter 2) as a way to make you more mindful of the addictive qualities of smartphones.

+ Clean up your home screen. Move social media apps off your main home screen. Or alternatively you can delete apps off your phone altogether and only access your social media channels by signing in via a web browser. Both of these techniques will dissuade you from sliding from a necessary task into doomscrolling.

+ Screen-free. Make clear house rules about times and places that are screen-free. Whether that means when you come home from work, at meals, or in the bedroom, carve out times when phones are out of sight.

+ Limit your usage of individual apps. Both Android and Apple devices have settings that allow you to limit how much time you spend on apps. You can find the instructions for this by searching for setting time limits or app limits at Google Help Centre for Android devices and at Apple Support for Apple devices.

+ Parental controls. If you are a parent, when you finish setting limits for yourself, set up parental controls. There are layers of parental controls including limiting times on certain apps. The first layer is to set up controls at the Internet provider level. If you do this, it will block adult content for everyone in the household. The next layer is to set up controls at device level: the phone, iPad or games console. Lastly, you can set up controls at individual app level. You can find up-to-date sets of parental control guides for a wide range of devices and apps on the Internet Matters site: https://www.Internetmatters.org/parental-controls/. For gaming consoles there are a set of parental controls guides available at www.AskAboutGames.co.uk.

Remember, parental controls can only go so far. As children get older or more digitally savvy, they are likely to be able to get around parental controls quickly and easily. Parental controls also don’t build critical digital citizens but rather function as a baby gate, and at some point, kids do need to learn to walk down the stairs. For these reasons, parental controls can be a strategy that is employed, but not the only one. You should still be aware of your child’s online activity.

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