All of it

The Kitchen Safe seems to have set off a spark.

The turning of the dial. Pressing down. Watching the countdown. The familiar noise of the lock sliding into place, sealing my decision to confine the smartphone inside the small plastic container for however long I had chosen.

By coincidence, I had started reading Dopamine Nation by Anna Lembke, M.D. around the same time I purchased the safe. In it, Anna writes about “self-binding”, the restrictions that we place on ourselves when we’re attempting to control or break our addictions. It gave me pause, as I thought about all the different ways I had tried to remove my phone from my hand, a strong feat considering it felt permanently attached. 

First, and perhaps most obvious, was deleting all social media apps from my phone. This worked, momentarily. Eventually I just went on the web version of Instagram, telling myself it somehow didn’t count. Then, in another futile attempt, I deleted my social media accounts altogether. I’m now on my fifth Instagram account, a testament to how easy it is to simply pick up where you left off. 

My own house rules were another valiant effort, and I was convinced that if I turned my phone off and put it away in a drawer after dinner, I truly wouldn’t be tempted. There was always a reason to retrieve it - I had a bad day, I had a good day, I have to message someone, I don’t feel well, I started the Wordle and if I don’t solve it then how will I know what the word is, I need to  check the weather, I have to see how old this actor on T.V. is, I haven’t been on it for an entire hour and surely there are at least fifteen people and a news station searching for me. I could truly generate any excuse to turn that phone back on, none of which were important.

Changing my phone to grey scale was another attempt, albeit a fairly short one. It’s much less exciting to doomscroll in black and white, since the bright, flashy colors that normally pulled me in were gone. I was hopeful at first, before realizing I was spending just as much time on my phone as before, only now I seemed to be slightly more depressed. 

All of these former restrictions I had placed on myself required constant willpower, and if there’s anything I know about myself, it’s that I have a minuscule amount when it comes to indulgences. I’ve always been an “all or nothing girl”, and it seems this was no exception to the rule. 

That’s why this K-Safe may actually be the answer to my prayers.

Once or twice a day, I make a decision. I don’t have to “be good” for the rest of the day, I simply don’t have a choice. I only need to have willpower for about thirty seconds, and even I can muster up that amount. Once the phone is locked safely away, it’s as though it doesn’t exist, at least until the timer runs out.

It’s helped immensely in realizing the problem didn’t lie solely in social media, it stemmed from the entirety of the phone. The tiny computer that we all carry around is addicting in itself, regardless of what I’m using it for. When I had deleted social media apps, I found myself scouring web-pages for things I wasn’t even interested in, if only to keep staring at the tiny screen. Emails were checked more, games were played, photos relived. Anything to keep the glow a few inches from my gaze.

Now that I know who the real opponent is, the fight seems so much simpler. Social media was an easy target to blame. While it was certainly a substantial part of it, I’m pretty sure I’d be fiddling with the calculator app if that were my only option. At some point it became less about the content and more about the addiction. Anything provided a fix as long as it was on that phone. 

I still take the smartphone on outings for Google maps and the camera (although I have acquired some good old fashioned paper maps), and of course I’m checking it a couple of times a day at home for Whatsapp messages and Instagram. In the future, I’d like to be rid of it all together, and the only thing stopping me right now appears to be a lack of digital cameras on the market (a blog about a disappointing visit to BestBuy will appear next week). Instagram and Whatsapp I can always check on the Chromebook at home.

Since it’s an overcast Sunday afternoon, I’m lazily writing this from the comfort of bed. The smartphone is off and locked up for the next twelve hours, only to be released from its confines at six a.m., although I’m toying with the idea of a week-long cleanse beginning tomorrow evening. 

We’ll see if I can gather enough momentary courage to set the safe timer for seven days.