AvenueJ

This is not a blog post detailing why I am tired of the endless, never-ending, scroll that is “the algorithm”. This is a blog post detailing every method I have tried to remove technology from my sphere that has sought to monopolize my attention through design that promotes addiction. How you define “addiction” in this case is irrelevant, at least to me, because that is purely personal. That’s why this post is titled “How I Cut Addictive Technology Out Of My Life”.

We all have our technological vices—social media, online gambling, mobile games, etc. Whatever constitutes your virtual cigarette after a long day at work, my hope is that the methods below may give you some ideas for your particular use case. And I truly mean that—I don’t think there is a one-size-fits-all solution here. Your life has unique needs, and I think you will need to tailor these approaches to you.

Dumb Phones

This is a no-go, full-stop. Uber, Google Maps, and other apps in my life have become genuine necessities. The derelict Nokia sitting in my parent’s attic is just not going to work for me. There are not-smart-but-not-quite-dumb phones out there like the light phone. The initial release of the light phone included no GPS whatsoever. It appears that has changed with later iterations, but certain apps I use frequently, like AllTrails, aren’t going to come to an agnostic platform like this anytime soon. For many people though, I think this is a great solution.

Screen Time Limits

This just doesn’t work. And I don’t mean that in a “does not succeed in keeping my screen addiction at bay” kind of way, I mean this does not work on a technical level, like a car with only 1 tire. Forgive the tin-foil hat wearing, but if I had to broker a guess, I would say this feature was deliberately shipped with bugs. Apple, after all, does have a vested interest in keeping me as phone-addicted as humanly possible. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time Apple released broken software on purpose.

Regardless of whether this was intentional or not, my experience with this feature has not been pleasant. It seemed to work for maybe a few days, and then just… stopped? I’m still not entirely sure what happened, but after giving it a second attempt, and the functionality still just letting me bypass the screen time limit after a while, it became clear that this was not going to be my solution.

Apple Configurator

Two Apple-specific sections in a row, yeesh. Apologies to my Android readers.

To my fellow Apple users, this the real deal. When your school or job gives you a work phone, company iPad, or university laptop, you may find that some features are strangely missing. Mainly, all the fun, administrator settings. Well, this is how the magic happens.

Apple Configurator is a desktop application for IT teams, provided by Apple in order to manage devices by your company. Or in our case, it’s our ticket to gaining true control of our Apple devices. In my case, that’d be my iPhone. Much like iTunes in the early 2000s (or present day, I haven’t used it in forever), it is clumsy, awkward, and unintuitive, but once you get it going, it works. The entire process is pretty well outlined in this Reddit post, as well as a YouTube video linked in the comments. I immediately hit a snag with the instructions though. Apple Configurator is very strict on what operating systems it will run on. Only the newest macOS will be compliant. Unfortunately for me, my 2017 MacBook Pro could not upgrade to the latest and greatest OS. So I had to recruit a friend with a newer MacBook to let me install this on their computer, so that I could ultimately load in a “profile” (basically, a config) on my iPhone. This profile could only be modified on their computer. Incredibly lame, but once I got it working, I was satisfied. Plus, even if I did have a compliant MacBook, the additional drudgery of needing to plug my phone in and navigate the abominable user experience made for an additional deterrent from quickly going in and bypassing the restrictions if I was feeling indulgent. As the saying goes: it’s not a bug, it’s a feature.

A few months later, I was road tripping through California, on vacation. When all of a sudden, WhatsApp, the app that I receive maybe 50% of my texts through, would not open unless I agreed to install an update. Guess who was incapable of doing so because they had removed access to the App Store on their phone?

This was a pretty ridiculous situation to find myself in. Not only did I need to wait to get back home and visit my friend to use their computer to get the desired controls on my own phone, I had no way of bypassing those controls (as far as I’m aware) to resolve this issue. Normally, that’d be a good thing, but in this case, I was barred from a simple software upgrade. I came home from my vacation, used my friend’s computer to remove the Apple Configurator profile, and thanked them profusely.

I’m sure there is a way to have Apple Configurator remotely send an updated profile to all the devices within an IT team’s purview, but for me, I was done with this. The need for someone else’s computer was a deal breaker, and I was not going to buy a thousand dollar device to make this work.

Custom DNS Resolver

When you go into your browser and type in a website in the URL bar, that URL string needs to get resolved into an actual IP address. Who does that resolution? A DNS Resolver. Seems like a prime locale for us to inject some restrictions on what domains we can access. Enter: Custom DNS Resolvers. Or resolver (singular). Every other free option besides OpenDNS seems to offer pretty poor customization.

The OpenDNS dashboard is pretty easy. You can block specific categories, like social media. Or, you can block specific domains. It works pretty great! But there are some big downsides:

• Throwing this onto your router means everyone you live with is now subject to the restrictions that only you are volunteering for. Guests on your WiFi network will obviously also be under these restrictions.
• Many routers do not support custom DNS resolvers, so this solution may require you to fork over some cash to buy a new one.
• You can restrict access to example.com, but example.com/specific-page is a no go.
• There’s nothing stopping you from disconnecting from WiFi on your phone and using your data instead, bypassing your custom DNS resolver.
• You can always open the OpenDNS dashboard and remove the filters so that you can get your fix whenever your self-control is running low. That can be mitigated though, by having a trusted buddy maintain your credentials so that only they can edit these filters.

Some of these cons may not be deal breakers for you, but for me, this is not an ideal solution. But it is (potentially) free, and after the initial setup hassle, it is pretty easy to configure.

Parental Controls

Ultimately, the issue with a lot of the previously listed solutions is that they rely on you to administer your own controls. You are always capable of bypassing those controls because you are the one setting them. You know the password, or pin, or whatever it is that gets you to the levers and buttons that let you access your digital vice. Using some kind of parental control system is what resolves this tug-of-war with your self control.

However, you need someone you really trust. A partner, a parent, a friend—whoever it is, you are placing a lot of faith in this person, so be careful. The parental control app that I use, Qustudio, shows everything that I do on the web on the interface for the “parent”. And I have no way of toggling this feature off. This is to say nothing of the total forfeiture of my privacy to a corporation. So while I think this solution is by far the most effective at curbing my unhealthy browsing habits, I do think it comes with very serious tradeoffs.

Typically, the way these systems work is you install some sort of application on whatever device you want to monitor. The “parent” controls everything from some sort of hub website or app. They can block apps, websites, set time limits, etc. When I install apps on my iPhone, Apple sends a request to the “parent”, asking for approval. When I was using OpenDNS, I was occasionally able to bypass domain restrictions by downloading a dedicated app for whatever website I was trying to access. I imagine this is dependent on how specific apps have API access set up. Regardless, this loophole was no longer viable on Qustudio.

The interface for any “parent” using Qustudio is very bare bones, and leaves a lot to be desired, but so far, it does the job. Do not consider this blog post an endorsement for Qustudio. I tried one other system, whose name I can no longer remember, and didn’t like it, so migrated to Qustudio instead. It’s serviceable, but there very well may be a better option out there.

Beyond the total lack of privacy and steep annual subscription fee, there are a few other cons to using these systems. Some internal settings on my devices are now locked, such that I can only access safe search on web browsers. I also suspect a small handful of technical issues I’ve run into with other programs manifest from some sort of conflict with how Qustudio handles my network traffic. Lastly, on my iPhone, I had to completely change my iCloud account. My age had to be reset to under 18, and I have to be under a family iCloud account under my partner, who Apple thinks is my parent.

Yeah, this is pretty ridiculous. But it works.

Browser Extensions

Feed Removal

Many algorithmically-driven-feed-based platforms are, unfortunately, a requirement for daily life. LinkedIn is basically a necessity for getting a job. Much of the best instructional content is hosted on YouTube. Other social platforms encompass so may other critical functions in our lives, such as event-organizing, long-distance communication with loved ones, buying used goods, etc. that it’s become incredibly impractical to not use them in some capacity. I have no issue with these features, but in my view, they’re there to get you “in the door”. But once that feed catches your eye, there goes the next hour of your time.

So, given this, I have endeavored to find solutions to removing these feeds in the handful of cases where I must use such websites and apps. It’s here that I’ve found many browser extensions incredibly useful. Some work better than others, and I have no idea if these will be around by the time you read this, but I’ll list out the ones I’m using right now anyways.

Search Filtering

Regardless of what approach you end up taking, it can be frustrating to block certain websites, only to have them offered to you in search engine results. This makes sifting through the results cumbersome in my experience. I now use extensions like uBlacklist (Firefox, Chrome) to remove certain websites from search results.

Ad Blocking

If you’re tech-literate enough to be reading this post, I don’t think I need to mention uBlock Origin, but just to cover my bases, I’ll mention it here. Rather than removing feeds, this browser extension blocks ads. With it, is a handy feature that allows you to select HTML elements on a page for removal. I probably use the “block element” feature on uBlock Origin at least once a week. Some websites can be incredibly hard to read, even with an adblocker. I love having the flexibility to remove elements as needed to focus my attention on whatever it is that actually requires my focus, rather than some sidebar content competing for my attention.

Other Helpful Tips

• r/nosurf is great Reddit community that discusses digital minimalism. I owe a lot of what I’ve learned on this journey to the great resources there. Don’t worry, the irony of recommending a social media site (or however you categorize Reddit) while advising you on your digital detox journey is not lost on me.
• Most web browsers now have their start page littered with news, frequently visited sites, eye-catching thumbnails, and other clutter. I strongly recommend you find a way to remove this. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve opened up my browser, ready to look up something very specific, only to immediately forget what it was I wanted to do because some clickbait article on my browser’s front page grabbed my attention. It’s like a digital version of the doorway effect. I won’t outline how to remove this junk here, since the approach will vary depending on what browser you use, and any instructions I write here or link are likely to be out of date by the time you read this anyway.
• Some people find it helpful to eliminate color off of their screens, and make everything on their device greyscale. Other accessibility features on your device can allow you to change the UI so that everything is in a much larger font, thus removing much of the design glamour and visual appeal. I have played around with these solutions, but ultimately did not stick with them. Messing with the colors on your phone makes taking pictures difficult.