6 ways to use your phone less
In May 2025, Angela Duckworth delivered a college commencement speech encouraging college graduates to pursue ‘situation modification’ in relation to our phones.
As she describes it, situation modification means “using physical distance to create psychological distance”. For example, keeping your phone far away from you and a book right next to you instead.
With Gen Z spending an average of 6 hours per day on their phones — it’s a sign that we need to be more mindful with our phone use. But when social media companies pay unfathomable amounts of money to keep people on their apps as long as possible, it takes deliberate actions to bring that number down.
Here’s how:
6 practical ways to modify your situation when it comes to your phone
1. Keep your phone in a different room
When you need to focus deeply, put your phone in another room. Out of sight, out of mind.
2. Change your sky-to-screen ratio
When you feel bored or anxious, go outside. Nature has no algorithm to grab your attention, but it has beauty and many healing benefits we need as humans.
“All nature is doing her best each moment to make us well—she exists for no other end. Do not resist her. With the least inclination to be well we should not be sick.”
— Henry David Thoreau
Most American adults spend less than 1 hour outdoors per day and based on the average screen time of Gen Zs’, that makes a sky-to-screen ratio of 1:6. I think we can both agree that probably isn’t good for us.
3. Keep your phone off the dinner table
If you’re having dinner with people you care about, agree to keep phones off the table and out of reach.
4. When driving, keep your phone beyond arm’s reach
Distracted driving causes hundreds of thousands of accidents and thousands of deaths each year.
5. Don’t keep your phone in your bedroom
“If the last thing you stroke before bed and the first thing you caress in the morning is your phone — change it.”
— Esther Perel
Enough said!
6. Be deliberate
When you do choose to use your phone, be deliberate with how you use it.
“I had one for three months in 2008, when it came out. Other people’s opinions matter to me, as I’m sure they matter to everybody. The thought of being exposed to those opinions every second of every day, of having to present my life to other people in some other form than it exists every day, like a media presentation — I cannot imagine what my mind would be, what my books would be, what my relationships would be, what my relationship with my children would be.”
— Zadie Smith, explaining why she doesn’t have a smartphone on The Ezra Klein Show
Angela ended her speech with words that perfectly capture the philosophy of More Mindful Life:
“Commit to situation modification because this is what mindfulness looks like in the digital age. Not willpower but the wisdom to shape the situations that shape you. When you make your choices, remember what the writer Annie Dillard said, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives”.”
