When I got a dumbphone/flipphone, I immediately started living a super cool super fulfilling life! I travelled a ton, ran a marathon, immediately got good at art, read 4 books in a day, and now have 22 close friends! Thats exactly how it works, i'm not lying AT ALL, trust me ;)
...ahhh okay you got me, thats not actually what happened.
Yes my life did change, and all for the better! I do have a cooler and more fulfilling life now, but not like that, I just started living a regular life? This little post is about what that looks like these days (for me)
First, a little bit of math. My screen time with a smartphone was 5.5 hours on a good day and almost 9 on a bad: about an average of 7.25 hours a day. Ive been smartphone-less for a little over about 5 months; just about 170 days.
Average 7.25/hrs a day x 170 days = 1232.5 hours total/24hrs
51 full 24-hour days I got back.
ALMOST TWO MONTHS OUT OF THE FIVE
- Alright, i've never done that math before, holy shiitake mushrooms thats insane. Back on topic, oh my god I would have spent 2 months out of the past 5 entirely on my phone
What do I do instead? What consumes the hours? Or the in-passing minutes?
I live normally, just without a phone honestly, it didn't make me suddenly want to run a marathon or just turn into Picasso day one. It just gave me back the opportunity to live.
I turned to my hobbies, like ceramics, reading, journalling to bring the simple joys back into my everyday!
I stopped being able to distract myself from how icky I felt when I didn't move my body, so I slowly started swimming again!
I started to blog a little! Thanks for reading :D
I got bored at home, so I started seeking out social spaces and hanging out in person with friends and prioritizing making them!
Those are huge things, really big, hour by hour things that take up my life now. I am still a student, in a demanding major, who tries to study 5 hours a day, and I work part-time. Is that the most prominent change? Absolutely, but in the minutes passing between tasks, before I leave somewhere, waiting for something there is also a little mojo added back into my day. I would have been spending those little snippets of time pacifying myself on a quick scroll, 20-30 reels on IG that I would never remember. Instead those morsels are spent...
Doing nothing! Sitting around is a forgotten joy, don't be afraid to be alone with yourself, its the only way you will get to know you.
Sudoku! If i've got 5-10 mins waiting somewhere and feel up for the task, a quick sudoku from the little book I carry around is great.
Tidying up/cleaning! I mentioned this in a past blog post, but it's easier to keep the space around you tidy when you reclaim those little minuets while your breakfast is cooking or your waiting for the water to boil. Bagel still in the toaster? Why not give the kitchen a quick sweep! Coffee is steeping? Wouldn't you know it, thats how long it takes for me to unload the dishwasher! (still a student living at home, that dishwasher is a FULL 4-person dishwasher man)
People watching, takin' a quick ol' gander at your surroundings. Make sure you haven't forgotten what life looks like, or what the general population is up to.
I still spend some time on Tumblr, Reddit, and Pinterest, its not like I went cold turkey or that I'll never see social media again. Its easier to live your life when you have the time, and its easier to have the time when you don't have a monster algorithm in your pocket built to addict you. You can do it! Do it at the pace that is good for you, but get those two months back!
For the past few years, I have been refusing to acknowledge and face my issue with spending an absurd amount of time watching youtube videos. Usually by passively putting it on in the background. This is okay during repetitive tasks or as a background noise to creative projects, but more than often I find myself being hindered creatively for example because I have this urge to watch Youtube videos even during my creative writing or planning.
This has to stop. I don’t even have fun watching videos anymore. For this I have two theories, and likely it is a combination of both. First, in 2023 I tried to quit cold turkey by unsubscribing to all channels I have been following and blocking the homepage, as a result I have lost track of all the people I have been following back then. Secondly, not sure how to say this, but the role of influencers has changed to that of content creators. There is a push to showing even more extreme lifestyles, a push towards shorter form, flashier content, and the influence of AI. Either way, I have long been trying to return to the Youtube experience I have many happy memories of, but I have to understand that it no longer exists. There are virtually no communities anymore, few interesting people, many of the people I followed have quit and many of the ones that still make videos have become an empty shell of themselves. I have said this before, and I’ll say it again, people who gain popularity on the internet and as a result choose to quit their daytime job to decide to focus on making the content machine work, lose the spark that initially made them successful.
Because I have such a hard time finding videos I actually like, Youtube has become a bit of a gambling machine for me. This is so unnecessary, although I feel like this will be the case for any Youtube replacement I will figure out since that is how the internet is structured sadly. Lately I have been nostalgically dreaming back to the time where magazines were much more influential, or where radio stations had much more of a subculture. I wish it was easier to find a community. The internet feels lonely, and yet never before have there been this many people logged on at the same time.
Anyway to return back to my attempt to minimise youtube usage, I will be installing a clock that blocks the app for 20 hours a day. We’ll see how that goes and then later I can make it more strict
(I have a bunch more thoughts concerning this topic that need to mature, I will return to this post later)
Hello, all! You can call me Bee (25F). I am a master’s student in English and college comp teacher.
I wanted to make an intro post as a digital minimalist!
I don’t have a flip phone (can’t bc of work), but I’ve made great strides with screen time blockers, deleting apps, and grayscale. My phone screen time has gone from 7 hours a day to 2 hours per day!! That’s five hours extra time per day.
I am disabled (bipolar + autism). I’m interested in taking the original digital minimalism philosophy and modifying it so it’s more accessible to disabled people and people from different class backgrounds.
One benefit of my reduced screen time is that I spend more time doing literally nothing and, because of that, feel more connected to the sensory world. The taste of food, the texture of clothes on my skin, the feeling of a pillow against my head. It’s more visceral now!
I’m not going to romanticize reducing screen time too much because we often have little choice in the matter and sometimes difficult life circumstances means screen time is higher.
But, I will say that digital minimalism has improved my life exponentially. I can’t wait to meet more of you!
tumblr’s like: ‘in your orbit!’ — and it’s actually in jupiter’s orbit. ‘check out these blogs!’ — and it’s wall-to-wall the tags I’ve filtered. ‘check out these tags!’ — and it’s a sport I once fell asleep during, some boring animated show, teru vash, and eating disorders. ‘communities!’ — and it’s wastelands named after stuff I am neither interested nor would ever be interested in. ‘you seemed interested!’ — and it’s an inactive blog I reblogged a post from over three years ago. ‘recommended posts!’ — and I’m confused-travolta as to who I’m supposed to recommend them to. ‘for you!’ — and it’s clearly for this guy named bob who I think lives in thailand now but we haven’t spoken in eight years.
but also. HOLY SHIT!
STREETS!
😆
it’s awesome that tumblr is so broken. tumblr is the last parasocial media I didn’t quit yet (although that’s the goal). its absurd and useless and beautifully inept ‘algorithm’ is a godsent. multiple times, this happened: I came, I saw, I muttered ‘wtf’, I didn't scroll, I left, I returned to my current book or writing project. one time, I came, I snorted, I have written this post, I’m leaving. thanks, ya digital dummy. see you next week, I guess.
