I Treated My iPhone Like A Home Phone For 3 Weeks. Here’s What Happened.

This winter I decided to quit Instagram. I’d taken breaks before, but this time I was convinced: it was doing more harm than good. As an independent artist, I had clung to the idea that I needed it, but in reality it left me feeling oddly isolated while offering little in return.

The final straw was a subtle disillusionment. I had imagined the artists I admired living rich, creative lives offline. But seeing many of them post just as regularly as me or anyone else made me realize they were caught in the same cycle as the rest of us. I thought there must be another way to live.

By the time Lent rolled around, I searched my heart for what would actually be hard to give up. I wanted to give up something that would challenge me spiritually, and it quickly became clear what that was: I needed to give up turning toward my phone with my worries rather than toward God. 

I made it all the way through Lent, but realized I hadn’t gone far enough. While I was off social media and even writing articles about living the analog lifestyle, I was still reaching for my phone constantly.

Breaking the Habit

To change my digital habits, I knew I needed to implement some new boundaries, beginning with where I kept my phone. I realized I spent a lot of my time carrying my phone with me from room to room so it would be close to me. I was regularly picking it up, always with some “valid” reason to check something. Even when I just left it sitting nearby, its black mirror face called to me with every flash of light.

What I wanted was somewhere to set my phone and leave it, volume on, like a “home phone.” I searched through all of the knickknacks in my closet and found the perfect makeshift phone dock: a little cast iron turtle whose shell opened wide enough for my phone to rest inside. I placed it on a shelf in the kitchen, just out of my direct line of vision.

What I wanted was somewhere to set my phone and leave it, volume on, like a “home phone.”

From there, I made a few simple rules. I muted every notification that wasn’t from an actual person. I checked the notifications only at certain natural intervals. And each time, I returned my phone to its place when I was done. I also silenced it during dinner and kept it in my purse while out of the house.

During specific parts of the day, I gave myself permission to use it for longer periods intentionally. When my younger toddler is napping and my older toddler has quiet time, I’ll take my phone and answer emails, write, or check the news. Then it goes back into the turtle.

Everything Changed and Quickly

I’m not exaggerating when I say that I noticed results right away. As someone who prioritizes spirituality, I had always managed to find excuses for why my personal prayer life wasn’t more consistent. Suddenly, I found three clear opportunities to pray alone: in the morning, at the start of quiet time, and before bed. It was funny and also a bit unsettling that I didn’t find just one time. I immediately found three. That’s how often I had been turning toward my phone instead of to God.

The next thing I noticed was how much more creatively I began to solve everyday problems. When I needed to make a dress more modest, instead of ordering one of the clip-on-camis I had been browsing online, I made my own out of some spare lace fabric. 

I had also been trying to design a birthday invitation for my son’s fourth birthday party on my phone and couldn’t land on anything that inspired me. With my phone away in its turtle dock, I realized it would be much sweeter to draw the design and have him color it in, and then scan our creation for printing. The result was far more meaningful and personal than anything I could have made on my phone.

After that first week, my screen time was down by 63%. 

I even became more intentional about reaching out to friends. Throughout my day, I would notice myself thinking of a friend and consider what to say before grabbing my phone. Where I was worried I might feel disconnected, I felt more present and more connected than ever. 

Then the hard data came in: after that first week, my screen time was down by 63%. 

A Growing Awareness

I started to realize I wasn’t alone in this struggle. In fact, that same week, I came across others exploring screen addiction and trying to do something about it.

One of those people was Mary Harrington, whose Substack post read: “Scrolling is a form of prayer. What will you worship today?” In the piece she explores how digital absorption seems to bring out the worst in us: sloth, envy, lust, anger, pride, and the rest of the deadly sins. In her analysis, participating in that cycle amounts to a kind of self-imposed misery.

I also saw Reagan Conrad share that she had calculated her lifetime Instagram use and was shocked to realize she had spent a total of 365 days—an entire year of her life—on the app. That’s the kind of number most of us would rather not know.

And around the same time, I came across Arthur C. Brooks and his new book The Meaning of Your Life. In it, he argues that our current happiness crisis comes from a lack of meaning. While there are many causes, our overuse of digital technology plays a significant role. He suggests that constant screen engagement pulls us away from “right brain” thinking, which governs everything from creativity to understanding other people’s emotions to perceiving God’s love. 

The real goal is to invert our relationship with technology; to make it something we use, rather than something that uses us.

That’s the shift I saw in my own life when I put my phone down. I began solving problems more creatively, spending more time in prayer, and paying closer attention to the people around me.

Brooks offers some easy places to start “interrupting the doom loop”—put the phone down during meals and before bed, set boundaries around screen time, and be willing to step outside cultural norms in order to live more intentionally.

The goal isn’t to replace phone addiction with an obsession over avoiding our phones. These devices are useful tools, and they do have a place in our lives.

We won’t always perfectly follow our own rules, and that’s okay. During a stressful week, I found myself reaching for my phone more often, using distraction as a kind of relief. Instead of spiraling into guilt, I returned to my new habits as soon as I could.

The real goal is to invert our relationship with technology; to make it something we use, rather than something that uses us. That shift doesn’t require perfection, but it does require our attention.

The small changes we make, like where we put our phones and how often we pick them up, can give us something back: a little more creativity, a little more meaning, and a little more presence in our own lives.