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People say they've broken their phone addiction with one simple change to their settings

You can still use your phone, but you probably won't want to.

Photo credit: Canva

Want to spend less time on your phone? Try this hack.

Much ado has been made about young people spending inordinate amounts of time on their phones, but in reality, people of all ages and generations struggle with smartphone addiction. We use our phones for everything these days, but the utilitarian use of them can quickly be overshadowed by the dopamine hits we get from social media, games, and other apps that are designed to suck us in over and over.

People can try to limit their screen time, but it's hard when our phones are something we legitimately need to use. It's a slippery slope from checking an email to answering a Facebook message to clicking on a video, and then we're off to the races. We can remove apps or use app blockers, but there's an even simpler solution that many people swear by: grayscale.

phones, smartphones, phone display, grayscale, screen time This 1-minute phone hack changed my life.Grayscale Mode:We all need to fight back against the phone addiction that is destroying our attention and focus.Grayscale Mode removes the colors to… | Sahil Bloom | 795 comments www.linkedin.com

A simple switch in your phone's accessibility settings changes the phone from full color to grayscale, and for many people, that's all they needed to break the spell their phone had over them. When you open your phone and are met with a black-and-white screen full of apps, it does two things: 1) It reminds you that you're trying to use your phone less, and 2) It makes using your phone a whole lot less interesting.

The boring look is what makes it so effective; the idea is that our brains don't react to a grayscale screen the way they do to a brightly colored one. A 2023 study found that switching your phone to grayscale was "an effective strategy to reduce screen time and improve digital well-being," and people on Reddit have shared how much switching their phone display to grayscale has helped them:

"Recently, I switched my phone screen to grayscale and reduced the refresh rate to 60 Hz. The real surprise came when I looked up from the screen after a few minutes. Everything around me appeared way more vibrant, like in a radioactive way. It was like reality itself was so oversaturated that it felt surreal, almost cartoonish. For the first time in years, I can honestly say the world around me seems far more vivid and interesting than my phone screen." – EngarReddit

smartphone, screen time, screen addiction, phones, apps Man holding smartphone.via Canva Photos

"Each time I apply grayscale on my phone, I feel less tempted to use it because it's so boring compared to the colors of our world. Our mind is highly influenced by colors (that's why you're more willing to eat a dish that looks vibrant and colorful compared to a shitty mess, even though they have the same taste)." – [deleted]

"Yes! I’ve only had it on for a few hours and everything “looks like 90s” everything is colorful again and normal and feels real like a haze has lifted." – Hot_Necessary_3305

"Yeah, grayscale my phone is the only thing that helped me curb my phone addiction. Now if only I know how to make a shortcut to it. Going all the way to accessibility to change it is a hassle. Sometimes I need to change my phone back for color required task and my eyes will get used to black and white eventually so I have to keep switching it on and off." – American_GrizzlyBear

"My phone automatically switches to grey scale every night at 10pm, helps to discourage scrolling at night." – m333ejm

"Turned it on and instantly found myself less interested in scrolling. I completely get what you mean by the world being more vivid, looking up after staring at a greyscale screen makes the colours jump out at you in the real world. I’ve setup an automation to have greyscale turn off when I open photos & the camera but for now, this is definitely what i’m using going forward." – QuitSplash

smartphone, phone addiction, scrolling, phone settings, social media So many of us mindlessly scroll. Grayscale can help. Giphy

How to turn on grayscale in your phone settings

The grayscale option is usually under Accessibility settings. Still, how you get there will vary by phone make and model, and any instructions I share here may end up outdated, so a quick Google search for "How to turn on grayscale settings on iPhone/Android" is your best bet for figuring it out.

I found that setting a grayscale display on the iPhone wasn't terribly intuitive, and once I put it in, I realized how annoying it would be to switch back to color if I wanted or needed to. (Sometimes I want to see a photo in color, or I'm looking at a color-coded chart that doesn't work in grayscale.) After a little tutorial from a Gen Zer, I was able to set a toggle shortcut so that if I press the power button quickly three times, the color options pop up so I can switch back and forth quickly.

Most of us can use some hacks to help us break our phone and screen overuse, and the simpler, the better. Try the grayscale trick and see how quickly your brain loses interest. For many, it's nothing short of life-changing.

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Brilliantly simple website gives users a small taste of what it's like to read with dyslexia

Try reading this text and your empathy for folks with dyslexia will grow by leaps and bounds.

Canva Photos

Website lets users experience what it's like reading text when you have dyslexia.

If you stumbled upon Victor Widell's website, you might think your computer was experiencing some technical difficulties. But you'd be wrong.

The letters within each word on the site are scrambled and moving around erratically, and although you might be able to read each sentence if you slow down and focus, it's no walk in the park.

Widell designed it that way on purpose. It's a glimpse into what someone who has dyslexia might have to deal with every day.


dyslexia, reading, books, fonts, disabilities, developmental reading disorders, accessibility Dyslexia is underdiagnosed and very misunderstood. Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

"A friend who has dyslexia described to me how she experiences reading," Widell writes on his site which has spread far and wide across the Internet. "She can read, but it takes a lot of concentration, and the letters seem to 'jump around.'"

Seeing letters "jump around" is a common experience among (the very large number of) people who have dyslexia.

The condition — which you might also hear referred to as developmental reading disorder (DRD) — isn't a defect in a person's ability to think or focus, nor is it at all reflective of someone's intelligence (an unfortunate misconception).

Dyslexia occurs when there's a problem in the area of the brain that interprets language, as the National Library of Medicine points out. And it may affect more people than many of us realize.

Dyslexia is still underdiagnosed and kids in communities of color are disproportionately affected.

About 20% of the total population is affected by dyslexia according to The Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity, yet many remain undiagnosed and secretly battle this "hidden disability" without proper help.

"While there are numerous curricula and programs designed to increase literacy, dyslexia is often overlooked when searching for causes of illiteracy," the center explains, noting black and Latino students are more likely to go undiagnosed, seeing as the disorder flies even more under the radar in urban schools.

Given that about 1 in 5 of people live with dyslexia, it's no wonder Widell's website is striking a chord with plenty of people online.

His work to help nondyslexic people empathize with those who have DRD isn't the first empathetic take on dyslexia to go viral though.

Back in 2014, Dutch designer Christian Boer created a dyslexic-friendly font for folks like himself.

The font, called Dyslexie, not only helps people with dyslexia, it also helps those who don't live with it to better understand how similar-looking letters within a standardized alphabet can be a big bottleneck to those who do.

dyslexia, reading, books, fonts, disabilities, developmental reading disorders, accessibility At first glance, Dyslexie doesn't look all that different from a regular font.By studiostudio graphic design - Fair Use

The letters in Dyslexie may look like any other letters, but they have key characteristics, like exaggerated stick and tail lengths (on letters like "j" or "b") and heavy base lines. These subtle but important factors help to differentiate letters that may seem similar in appearance to someone who has dyslexia.

Take the letters "h" and "n," for example. They sort of look a bit alike, right? Dyslexie's "h" has a longer ascender and its "n" has a shorter one.

"When they're reading, people with dyslexia often unconsciously switch, rotate, and mirror letters in their minds," Boer told Dezeen magazine in 2014. "Traditional typefaces make this worse because they base some letter designs on others, inadvertently creating 'twin letters' for people with dyslexia."

In the same vein as Dyslexie, Widell's site aims to help those without the condition know what it's like to walk in someone else's shoes.

Widell's website, of course, doesn't give someone the authority to know what dyslexia is like if they don't have the disorder themselves.


dyslexia, reading, books, fonts, disabilities, developmental reading disorders, accessibility Dyslexia is different for everyone. Photo by Matias North on Unsplash

As The Independent noted, people who have dyslexia experience it differently and through various symptoms. Widell's site can't possibly simulate the one and only experience of someone who has dyslexia because there isn't a one and only experience.

Still, the outlet notes, it's "a great way to give people a taste of the difficulties faced."

"Nothing will ever show [people who don't have dyslexia] exactly how it truly feels to read while dyslexic," one Redditor who claims to have the disorder pointed out about Widell's site. "But this is damn close."

To learn more about how Dyslexie works, check out the video below:

- YouTube www.youtube.com

This article was originally published in 2016. It has been updated.

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A Gen Zer used only tech from the 1990s for a week. Here's how he felt at the end.

"I want to step back into the digital world with some mindfulness."

Lucky Boy/YouTube

A Gen Zer goes back to the 90s for a week.

Those of us who are old enough to remember the '90s can recall how quickly it seemed like technology was moving at the time. Now that era seems quaint and slow in comparison, which has many people—even those who weren't alive then—yearning for those simpler times.

As convenient as modern smartphones, computers, and the like are, they've added layers of complexity and noise to our lives, prompting some people to question whether it's worth it. Even young people who have grown up immersed in digital screens are taking a step back and wondering what life would be like without modern tech.

cassette player, mixed tape, technology, 1990s, 1980s Technology has come a long way. Giphy

One Gen Zer, who goes by Lucky Boy, even went so far as to experiment with ditching all of his devices and only using technology from the 1990s for a week. No laptop, no iPad, no smartphone, no Kindle. No Spotify, no online gaming, no streaming movies. Just a Tamagotchi, an iMac computer (that ended up not working, forcing him to use pad of paper for his writing), a Sony Discman and CDs, books from the library, a TV/VCR combo (that also ended up not working), and a flip phone that was as close as he could get to a phone from the 90s that would still function.

"One of my goals this week has been to live more life," Lucky Boy said. "I feel like people in the '90s experienced more of life, whereas me, in 2024, I spend most of my day staring at a screen. The library, for example, is an experience of life that we've sort of eliminated because now we can just go online and order a new book or download it straight to our Kindle. We lose that real-world experience of searching through shelves of books, trying to find the one you're looking for, and so if everything we do becomes digital, we're no longer living life in the real world. And so I just want to disconnect from the modern internet world and try to live more in the real world."

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Lucky Boy saved one piece of '90s tech for the end of the week, knowing he'd overuse it if he brought it out earlier: The Nintendo 64 with a Super Mario Bros. game included. Video games are video games, as anyone who spent hours playing Space Invaders on an Atari can attest, and Lucky Boy had a blast reliving his childhood with a lower-tech game.

So, how did going a week with only '90s tech affect him?

"It's honestly been a pretty good week," he said. "The lack of stimulation made the little things in life much more enjoyable. I could sit down for a meal with friends without feeling the urge to check my phone, and just sitting on a bench in nature, I was able to fully embrace the beautiful world we live in. Life has just felt simpler…I want to step back into the digital world with a little mindfulness so I can control technology before it controls me."

digital detox, hammock, relaxation, no phone, tech break We all need tech breaks once in a while. Giphy

It's good for all of us to take breaks from our screens sometimes, but most of us probably don't consider going back to a previous era's technology to do a digital detox. Millennials and Gen Zers seem to be turning that direction, however, with a collective affinity for all things analog. Record players, Polaroid cameras, AM/FM radios, cassette players, and "dumb phones" are all the rage with younger adults, and it's rather amusing to their Gen X and boomer parents.

On the one hand, the desire for slower tech and less digital overwhelm is great. On the other hand, anyone who trades in Spotify for a cassette player clearly never had to make a mixed tape from the radio while they were growing up. However, the sentiment is admirable, and it's refreshing to see young people recognizing the need to unplug and, as Lucky Boy says, "live more life" in the real world.

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Harvard happiness researcher explains why being bored is 'essential' for our mental health

We have a powerful neurological network that's only triggered by boredom.

Harvard Business Review/YouTube

Boredom is good for us, but smartphones make it too easy to avoid it.

It's no secret that spending too much time on our screens isn't good, but most of us have a hard time not overusing them anyway. Our lives have become so intertwined with technology that we use our phones for everything—communication with friends and family, paying bills, following the news, finding recipes, tracking habits, entertainment, and more. Excessive phone use is associated with all kinds of mental and emotional health problems in youth and young adults, and we're seeing more and more older adults impacted by phone addiction as well.

But hey, at least we're never bored, right? That's true—unfortunately. As Harvard psychologist and happiness researcher Arthur C. Brooks shares, our phones, which keep us from being bored, might actually be the crux of the problem.

"You need to be bored. You will have less meaning and you will be more depressed if you never are bored," Brooks says bluntly. "I mean, it couldn't be clearer."

- YouTube www.youtube.com

"Let me give you the good side of boredom in general," he continues. "Boredom is a tendency for us to not be occupied otherwise cognitively, which switches over our thinking system to use a part of our brain that's called the default mode network. That sounds fancy. It's really not. The default mode network is a bunch of structures in your brain that switch on when you don't have anything else to think about. So you forgot your phone and you're sitting at a light, for example. That's when your default mode network goes on."

The problem is, we don't like it, Brooks says. One of his colleagues at Harvard did an experiment where participants had to sit in an room and do absolutely nothing for 15 minutes. The only thing they could do was push a button that would deliver a painful electric shock to themselves. So the choices were to sit there being bored or shock themselves, and surprisingly, a large majority chose self-inflicted shocks over sitting with their own thoughts for 15 minutes.

"We don't like boredom," says Brooks. "Boredom is terrible."

harvard, psychology, boredom, phone addiction, technology Many people would rather push a button to shock themselves than to be bored for 15 minutes. Photo credit: Canva

But why? What's so bad about letting the mind wander? Brooks says it comes down to having to ponder life's big questions.

"The default mode network makes us think about things that might be kind of uncomfortable," he says. "When you think about nothing, your mind wanders and thinks about, for example, big questions of meaning in your life. What does my life mean? You go to uncomfortable existential questions when you're bored."

"That turns out to be incredibly important, incredibly good," Brooks continues. "One of the reasons we have such an explosion of depression and anxiety in our society today is because people actually don't know the meaning of their lives. Much less so in previous generations. Tons of data show this, and furthermore, we're not even looking."

The reason we're not looking? Because we don't have to. We have a device that keeps us from ever having to be bored, and we reach for it instantly without even consciously thinking about it most of the time.

harvard, psychology, boredom, phone addiction, technology We're so quick to reach for our phones at the slightest hint of boredom.Photo credit: Canva

"You're actually trying to not be bored because the default mode network is mildly uncomfortable, because it sends you to the types of questions that you can't get your mind around, you can't get your arms around," Brooks says. "Well, that's a big problem. That's a doom loop of meaning. If every time you're slightly bored you pull out your phone, it's going to get harder and harder for you to find meaning. And that's the recipe for depression and anxiety and a sense of hollowness, which, by the way, are all through the roof."

So how do we get out of this "doom loop of meaning?" Brooks suggests consciously leaving our phone behind more often and forcing ourselves to "be bored more."

"Tomorrow, when you go to the gym in the morning after you wake up, don't take your phone," he says. "Can you handle it? Not listening to a podcast while you're working out, just being in your head. I promise you, you'll have your most interesting ideas while you're working out without devices. It's probably been a long time since you've done that. Commute with nothing, not even the radio. Can you do that? Start getting better at periods that are 15 minutes and longer of boredom, and watch your life change."

phone addiction, boredom, technology, smartphones, working out Try working out without listening to anything and see where your mind wanders.Photo credit: Canva

Brooks refers to boredom as a skill, and he says the better you get at boredom the less bored you will be with ordinary things—your job, your relationships, and things going on around you.

"But more importantly, you'll start digging into the biggest questions in your life: purpose, meaning, coherence, significance," he says. "And who knows? You might just get happier."

Brooks shares the three protocols he uses to curb phone addiction:

- Don't sleep with your phone. (He has a no device policy after 7 p.m. and doesn't sleep with his phone.)

- No phones during meals. ("We're there for each other," he says. "We're not there for people who aren't there.")

- Regular social media fasts. (He has device and social media cleanses where he avoids them for longer lengths of time.)

Brooks says his brain screams at him at first when he takes breaks, which is the addiction talking. But then it calms down and he ends up feeling a lot better by the end of his break. "These protocols are really, really helpful and I recommend them to anybody and everybody," he says.

Most of us are aware of how addictive our phones can be, but we may struggle to moderate our own usage. Giving ourselves clear boundaries around when, where, and how we use our devices, as well as knowing that the discomfort of boredom is actually good for us, may help us all lead a healthier, more balanced life.

You can find more from Dr. Brooks, including his books and research on happiness, here.

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