Delete Your Social Media Apps

The one thing that helped me reclaim my attention

I was sitting at a coffee shop with my sixteen year old daughter. As I sipped my cappuccino and gazed out the window overlooking a local lagoon, my daughter rapidly tapped and swiped on her phone. 

It was the slow week after Christmas. Over the holidays, it seemed like she’d been spending more time on her phone than ever before.

As a dad, I couldn’t help but be concerned, but every attempt we’d made to limit her screen time had proved futile. As a therapist, I was well aware that social media use puts teen girls at higher risk of anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and self harm. Even though my daughter seemed mostly okay (if a bit anxious), I couldn’t help but worry.

“Hey,” I said, “let’s both check our screen time reports right now and compare.” My daughter’s eyes widened. “Okay,” she said.

We swapped phones and checked each other’s stats for the past week. My daughter’s total screen time was over nine hours per day. She looked a bit sheepish. I took a deep breath. “It’s okay,” I said. “Let’s look closer. What apps are you using the most?” 

As we studied her screen time data, a clear picture emerged: she spent the majority of her time on TikTok and Youtube, followed by Instagram and SnapChat. In fact, I would later learn, her stats were right in line with the averages for Gen Z, who spend an average of nine hours per day on screens, and over seven watching video content. 

Yes, you read that right–kids are spending more than half their waking hours on their phones. 

As a Millennial, I’ve spent plenty of time on screens in my life. But for the last several years, as I’ve increasingly valued my ability to be present and do deep work, I’ve experimented with all kinds of tactics to reduce the hold that my smartphone has on my brain. I’ve taken months-long social media fasts. I’ve read books on digital minimalism. I’ve even turned my screen black-and-white.

But one action has made more of a difference than any other: removing all social media apps from my phone. 

To be clear, I still have social media accounts. I use Twitter, Reddit, and YouTube on my laptop. But there are no social apps on my phone. I also don’t keep games or news apps on my phone, though I do still have email, maps, podcasts, and audiobooks. 

This one simple change has kept my daily phone time to an average of an hour and 20 minutes, over the course of many months. The majority of the time I spend on my phone is just text messaging, with email a distant second place.

Deleting my social apps has given me more presence and peace of mind.  It’s improved my ability to focus, whether I’m reading a book or having a conversation with a friend or client. And when everyone around me seems to be staring down at their phones, it’s allowed me to look up and wonder at this beautiful, complicated, surprising world. 

This, then, is my challenge to you: pull up your screen time report right now, take a snapshot of your stats, and then delete your apps for a week. You can keep your accounts, and you can check them on your computer. But don’t be surprised if you have less desire to do so. And don’t be surprised, either, if your daily screen time drops precipitously. At the end of the week, you can decide for yourself whether it was worth it.

At this point, you might be wondering if that conversation with my daughter had an impact on her screen time. The answer is no. At this point in her life, she doesn’t see a compelling enough reason to change her habits. But maybe someday, when like an increasing number of Millennials and older Gen Zers, she starts to feel like she should spend less time on her phone, she’ll appreciate her dad’s “one weird trick” to cut screen time.

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