Once again, I’m burned out, especially on the news, and I just have to quit the Internet for a few weeks. Hopefully, I can make a permanent adjustment so that it stays this way.

We just came home after visiting my grandma in Serbia. She finally met her great-granddaughter and was very happy. But sadly, I spent a lot of time on the porch smoking and scrolling through Twitter and Instagram. Twitter is famously known as the home of some of the most mentally deranged people in the world, so you can imagine how I felt after scrolling for 15 minutes every morning. It’s definitely not a good way to start the day.

Instagram comes second to Twitter. Lately it has gotten even worse because it has been flooded with sora AI videos, and I even saw some cartel execution videos.

Everything that can be said about the ill effects of social media has already been said, so I won’t go into that this time. What I will write about is my plan to make it work.

The ideal scenario would be if I got a mild electric shock whenever I picked up my phone, but sadly, there’s no way to achieve this. However, there’s something interesting out there: a Kickstarter for a six-pound (2.7 kg) phone case. It would be great for my purposes, if it weren’t for the $210 price tag. So I guess, once again, I’ll have to rely on willpower. Here’s my plan:

• No phone in the bedroom
  Every night when I go to bed, I’m on my phone for 30 minutes or so. Then, when I wake up randomly in the middle of the night, I check my phone. Sometimes when I do this, I can’t fall back asleep and stay awake for hours. The effects of blue light on sleep are well known.


• No phone in the bathroom
  I can’t remember the last time I was in the bathroom without my phone. It just feels perfect for this use. But on the other hand, the bathroom is (or should be) the one room in your apartment without screens, so why not use that time to just be with your own thoughts for a while? Or read the ingredients on a shampoo bottle, like we used to do in the era without phones.


• No spontaneous checking of facts
  “Where do I know this actor from?” “What’s the name of the Japanese currency?” “What’s the chemical symbol for quicksilver?” These are all questions that don’t have to be answered immediately.


• Uninstall every news app and block news channels on Telegram
  Absolutely no news checking on the phone (or PC) anymore. It’s mostly just noise. If something important happens, I’ll find out.

We all know that relying on willpower alone only gets you so far, so I have to create a failsafe mechanism. The way to do this is with an app called Forfeit. It’s an accountability app where you make “contracts.” For example: you won’t use your phone for more than 20 minutes each day, and if you exceed that, the app charges you €20. You can also make all kinds of contracts, for instance, going to the gym every day.

If all this fails, my last solution would be to sell my phone and buy a dumb one, or to go to hypnosis to cure myself of this cursed addiction.