To curb the temptation to constantly check your phone you could try turning on grayscale screen mode. Here's how to do it
Smartphone addiction is a problem that affects millions of people. There's no use denying it. According to some studies, spending many hours with your eyes on mobile devices risks having negative repercussions on your psyche, generating a series of mental disorders, such as depression, anxiety and sleep deprivation, but also on your physical health, increasing heart rate and pressure.
On average, according to a series of researches, we check our smartphone every 15 minutes. A time frame that is likely even lower in some individuals. Tristan Harris, former Design Ethicist at Google, argues that smartphones are designed to be addictive. And he makes a comparison. Mobile devices act on our minds exactly like slot machines: an incoming message is nothing more than a prize. And so we remain glued to the screen in the hope of "winning" again. Harris for years, as you can read on his website, has been studying how technology shapes our mind. And according to the founder of Time Well Spent, there is a way to reduce this addiction.
Fighting smartphone addiction with black and white
To curb this compulsive act of constantly checking the phone you could try to remove the colors, activating the grayscale screen mode. The former Design Ethicist argues that doing so would make the smartphone lose its appeal in the eyes of users. A black and white smartphone would be less beautiful and therefore uninteresting.
How to activate grayscale on Android and iOS
To activate grayscale screen mode is very simple. On smartphones running Android, you just need to go to the settings and enable "Developer Options". Then just click on "Simulate color space" and enable the "Monochrome" option. On iOS it's just as easy. Again, you'll need to go to settings, then to "General" and "Accessibility". From here we'll just have to click once again on "Settings" and select "Show color filters". At this point all we have to do is enable the "Gray Scale" feature.