I’m trying to evolve my relationship with my smartphone to ‘friends with benefits’

“Let’s put our phones under the bedroom pillows,” I suggested to my friend as we prepared to watch a film in the loungeroom. He baulked, seeming mildly offended, and insisted he could be trusted not to check his phone for the duration of the film.

He lasted 40 minutes and, infuriatingly, within minutes of him cracking, I went to my room, flipped up the pillow, and checked mine, too.

Revellers at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris on New Year’s Eve are too busy filming to celebrate the arrival of the new year.

This kind of interaction has been frustratingly common for me this year. In January, I set myself the aim of slowly breaking up with my phone after things had gotten out of hand. I was getting neck-aches from craning. I would walk into people when I should have been looking at where I was going. Even the designs on the Christmas and birthday cards sent to me from my mum remarked (jovially) on my smartphone addiction.

While I took her point, overly simple tips about setting time limits or buying a so-called “dumb phone” with limited capabilities weren’t working; I was already too far gone for preventative measures.

Modern life mandates smartphone usage within seconds of stepping outside your front door: to check a QR code menu in an “environmentally sustainable” cafe no longer printing menus; to hire a share-bike; to check when your train is arriving. Even with social media-blocking apps, I find a way to override them or just find another app to browse. It was the phone – not the apps – that I needed respite from.

The moment I knew things had reached breaking point was when I viewed a dystopian clip of the New Year’s Eve countdown at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. In the video, midnight hits, but no one hugs or kisses; everyone’s too busy filming on their phones to react to the moment. They’re static, almost silent and zombified. I knew that had I been in the crowd, I’d be no different.

Given what I was up against, I took a free phone break-up course, run by author Catherine Price. Here, she taught me and other addicts how to turn our smartphone screens to black and white. Without the dopamine-releasing colours, my phone suddenly seemed incredibly boring.

We also wrote break-up letters to our phones, as if we were splitting up with a lover. In mine, I wrote: “I know I always want you in my life ... But I have to end this infatuation and intense intimate relationship to find my way back to who I am again … Now it’s time to evolve our relationship to friends with benefits, rather than star-crossed lovers.”

The letter confirmed what I had known even before the course – that I needed to make drastic changes, not just tweaks, to end my addiction. This included my friends being onboard with my detox, too, or, at the very least, supportive of it. As with any form of detoxing, being around the thing you crave the most in the early days of change is risky. My willpower is, partially, dependent on my friends’ support, meaning I needed social un-influencers in my life.

In the United States, smartphone addiction is actually dropping among users aged 18-29. According to the Pew Research Center, dependency dropped from 28 per cent in 2021 to 20 per cent in 2023. Yet in Australia, the latest Digital 2024: Australia report by Meltwater revealed only 3 per cent of internet users aged 16-64 don’t have a smartphone. Data from Red Search also shows smartphone usage has increased from 85.7 per cent of the general Australian population in 2021 to 86.6 per cent in 2024. Despite these high figures, the same research found one in 10 Australians find mobile phones annoying, and four in 10 find them distracting.

Collective smartphone addiction, both literally and figuratively, keeps me awake at night. We’re changing how our brains work, and how entire communities interact. Instant gratification has replaced delayed dopamine release, which always takes too long.

Red Search data shows that 32 per cent of smartphone users in Australia report mobile devices increase their stress and anxiety levels which can, in turn, cause problems with concentration and sleep.

In a recent interview, Hillary Clinton said children’s “insidious” app addiction was one of her top concerns for our future and noted that many Silicon Valley execs – most of whom would be intimately aware of the addictiveness of the technology – ban their children from using smartphones and iPads.

Which is how I ended up flipping over my pillow to check my phone 40 minutes into a film.

Now, I’ve become so determined to succeed that I’m willing to rethink friendships over it. These people are my enablers; they influence my addiction when my already wobbly willpower wanes. Some of them become defensive when gently challenged about potential overdependence.

Thankfully, one friend enthusiastically agreed when I suggested a “mobile-free” catch-up, where our phones stayed in our bags. We made our own jokes rather than sharing ones from the internet. Without incessant alerts, we didn’t lose track of what we were talking about every five minutes. It brought back creativity into the conversation.

Smartphones aren’t going anywhere, nor do I want them to. They’ve improved our lives in so many ways, but what I do want is for more people to move out of denial about their addiction to them.

Only when my inner circle awakens to the need for more balance will I be able to truly step away from mine more often, too. Collective addiction ends by osmosis.

Gary Nunn is a regular contributor.

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