I’ve been running an experiment with my phone. I’ve changed it to display in B&W only. Sometimes I change it back to view a picture or video but for the most part it stays in B&W.
My phone use has been going through the roof these past few years. Occasionally mostly on weekends I’ve tacked up 6+hrs of screen time a day and thought there’s got to be something I can do to reduce this.
I’ve tried setting time limits but that’s too easy to ignore. I’ve abandoned most social media, FB, Twitter (X), Reddit, BlueSky etc. [Ok LinkedIn still counts but it’s less a true social media platform these days than just keeping up with connections, but I can see it’s moving in that direction…] But doing all that just seems to move my phone activity elsewhere.
I hate commercials so watching Youtube with commercials on my phone is painful, so that’s not a major problem, for me at least.
But the damn web, news sites, emails, slack channels, etc. it’s all just waiting there to fetch up your phone and start scrolling…
So, I read an article (I think the NYT), a while back, that suggested trying out changing your phone to display B&W only. It’s relatively easy to change from B&W to full color and back again. [On both the iPhone and Android its under accessibility controls.] So decided to try this.
Not sure how long it’s been but it’s been at least a couple of months by now. My best guess is it drops my screen time on average 30% a day. Not much I know but going from 6 hours to 4 is a meaningful amount. And even after a couple of months, it’s still working.
Now, it’s got me wondering if doing this with TVs, desktop displays, tablets, magazines, et al, would have the same impact.
Tried to change my desktop display to B&W but couldn’t find anyway to do this. I may have to do it at the laptop settings level.
I don’t think they make B&W TVs anymore but maybe there’s some out there that can be made to display in only B&W. Wonder if this would change my binge watching.
Magazines are typically full color but maybe I could move back to newsletters or newspapers and view/print them out in B&W. I remember when USA Today debuted as a color newspaper and it was very popular (for as long as newspapers still had a monetization model that worked in print). Most print newspapers are dead these days. Surprisingly, B&W WSJ still persists…hmm
One wonders what I do with the 30% of my phone time that moving it to display only B&W freed up for me. I must say it’s most probably spent reading (B&W) books and rarely, spending more time in nature. Is this a good trade off.
I think yes, altho even more time in nature would be better.
Comments?
