Deprogramming Yourself from Smartphone Dependency

I have worked in IT for 20+ years. I’ve grown up without smartphones, and have since built mobile applications for the web, iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and Blackberry. Let me share my amazing knowledge with you! Episode 4.

If you believe the smartphone was the greatest invention of the modern age (before AI was invented, obviously), and the idea of not using or owning a smartphone, sounds to you as unrealistic as it sounds comically misguided, or your smartphone is your only internet-enabled computing device, then you can skip this post.

Overcoming a smartphone dependency is no easy task. You have to prepare yourself to lose a significant part of your daily scaffolding, that you have no idea how to live without, yet. Certain people will lose the ability to reach out to you through your smartphone, which can create social tensions. These tensions are often impossible to resolve, as the other side is usually smartphone-dependent themselves. Your attempt of deprogramming yourself is easily misinterpreted as trying to make everyone stop using their beloved companion.

Step 1: If you’re an iOS user, congratulations, you can just switch to Android and this can already be enough to frustrate your will to live out of you, and never touch a smartphone again. If you’re an Android user, you’re not so lucky. You can’t just use the same concept and go to iOS. While you will hate iOS, it is ultimately too user-friendly to deprogram yourself. You will have to go right to Step 2.

Step 2: Get the most awful piece of garbage Android smartphone you can get your hands on. And I don’t mean those $10 ones from overseas. You want the most expensive garbage possible, so that you can also think about how much money you lost on this annoying experience every single day. I can’t recommend the Fairphone enough for this. If some of their marketing is actually true, you’re not even hurting the environment that much when you ultimately burn the phone in your yard. Make sure to put the device into a protective case to make the fingerprint sensor less reliable.

Step 3: The thing you see after you unlock your phone, the one with all the attention-grabbing icons and sliding animations that feel oh-so-good, is called the “launcher” on Android. You need to dramatically reduce the sensory impact of that user interface. Something like UnLauncher is perfect. Never again will you forget what you actually wanted to do, after you’ve found yourself 40 minutes deep into a game of Candy Ninja. You unlock your phone, go through the alphabetical list of your apps, open what you need, and then you lock the phone again.

Step 4: Mute the phone, put it on Do Not Disturb forever, disable notification LEDs, disable music volume-down for notifications, disable/auto-ignore calls from any caller not on your contact list, disable any voice-based interactions, whatever else you need to do to make the phone about YOU and YOUR intentions. Don’t forget to let actual friends and family call you through your firewall though!

Step 5: Set up fingerprint biometrics in the Android system. Then set up all your apps that accept biometric login and make them use it. Then disable biometrics in Android again, and switch to a password. Yes, not a pattern or a PIN, a full password. And make it good. All apps with biometrics registered will still ask you form them every time you open them. You now have to cancel that, then enter your password that you just entered a second ago when you unlocked the phone.

Learn to love your laptop and the web. Stop thinking you will ever look at all those snaps in your camera roll ever again. Learn not to use a smartphone as means of authenticating yourself anywhere. Bring out your old bank card again and use that to pay.