The 5 worst phone habits you need to leave behind

The phone habits you can’t afford in 2025

Let’s start with a number: 1,400 hours. 

That’s the time the average person spent on their phones last year.

About two full months. 

Imagine erasing two months from your year. Imagine what your last year could have looked like without the hours, weeks, and months drained by your screen.

But here’s the thing: if nothing changes, 2025 will look exactly the same.

Phones are great at stealing time — and even better at hiding the habits that let them.

Let’s shine a light on the biggest offenders. These are the 5 worst phone habits—and how to leave them behind.

Habit #1: Letting Your Phone Dictate Your Free Time

Phones have a sneaky way of taking over every empty moment. Instead of us deciding how much free time we give to our phones, they’ve trained us to hand over every spare second. It’s not just about the minutes lost — it’s about the space we lose to think, feel, and just be.

The Cost of the Habit

• The Loss of Negative Space: Phones replace the little gaps in life. Boredom, patience, even discomfort — these aren’t bad. They’re signals. They tell us what we need to work on or what’s missing. Without them, we lose the ability to deal with stress, regulate emotions, or grow from challenges.

• Brain Rot: What fills those gaps isn’t quality content. It’s usually the junk food of the internet: games, memes, and social media. These platforms are designed to be addictive and impossible to put down. The average person spends over 2 hours a day on social media.

• Opportunity Cost: Every hour lost to scrolling is an hour you could spend on something more fulfilling — reading, learning, connecting with loved ones, or just resting. The real cost isn’t just the time spent; it’s the time not spent on what matters.

The Fix

This one’s tough because the habit is deeply ingrained. But it’s not impossible.

• Create Physical Barriers: Use tools like Opal or One Sec to add a pause before opening apps. Or try physical tricks like putting an elastic band around your phone or rearranging your apps into hidden folders.
  

• Set Time Barriers: Apps like Screen Time can enforce daily limits on app usage. Alternatively, schedule phone-free blocks (e.g., 9 a.m.–11 a.m.) or designate specific "phone time" windows, like 6 p.m.–8 p.m.
  

• Delete ‘Slot Machine’ Apps: Social media and gaming apps are built on slot machine psychology, designed to keep you hooked. If they’re where most of your screen time goes, consider cutting them altogether. New year, new you — ditch the apps that drain you.

Habit #2: Texting While Walking/Driving

We’ve all seen it—or done it. The quick glance at your phone while crossing the street. The notification check at a red light. It feels harmless—until it isn’t.

The Cost of the Habit

• Danger to Pedestrians: Every year, about 270,000 pedestrians die globally — that’s roughly a fifth of all road traffic deaths. One study estimates that 1 in 10 pedestrian injuries is now related to distracted walking.
  

• Danger to Drivers: Distracted driving increases crash risk fourfold, and in some places, distracted driving deaths now surpass drunk driving deaths. Globally, road crashes kill 1.2 million people annually — a figure projected to surpass deaths from cancer, HIV, and violence.

The Fix

• Listen, we’re understanding about most habits. But this one? It’s life and death. Just don’t do it. For yourself, for others, for everyone.

Habit #3: Using Your Phone Before or After Bed

Most of us—72% of adults—sleep with our phones nearby. It’s the last thing we see before bed and the first thing we grab in the morning.

The Cost of the Habit

• Worse Sleep = Worse Health: Studies consistently find bedtime smartphone use leads to less and worse sleep. Poor sleep has some terrible downstream effects - harming  memory, concentration, and decision-making, and it can increase the risk of anxiety, depression, heart disease, and weight gain.
  

• Mornings in Reactive Mode: Using your phone first thing skips your brain’s natural wake-up process. Instead of transitioning calmly, you’re hit with notifications that throw you into a reactive state. Your focus scatters and your day starts dictated by the digital world — not you.
  

• Losing the Best Time of Day: Mornings are when your cognitive resources and willpower are fully replenished. It’s the best time for deep focus, planning, and reflection. By scrolling, you lose this golden window of energy and self-control.

The Fix

• Put Your Phone in Another Room: Physically separating yourself from your phone at night is one of the most effective strategies. Charge it in another room, and use the distance to reclaim your evenings and mornings.
  

• Rethink Your Alarm Clock: Using your phone as an alarm guarantees it’ll be the first thing you touch in the morning. Invest in a standalone alarm clock instead—let your mornings belong to you, not your notifications.
  

• Replace Scrolling with a Night and Morning Routine: Breaking a habit is easier when you replace it. It doesn’t need to be elaborate or time-consuming. At night, choose an activity to signal the end of your day. It could be writing a to-do list for tomorrow, journaling, or reading a book. In the morning, commit to a single task you’ll always complete before touching your phone. It could be as simple as making breakfast, savoring your coffee, or walking your dog. 

Habit #4: Letting Your Phone Shadow Your Work

Phones are like silent saboteurs to your productivity. In today's world, focus isn’t just a skill, it’s a battleground. And too often, your phone isn’t on your side.

The Cost of the Habit

• Its mere presence hurts: Studies have found that just having your phone nearby — on your desk for example — reduces your brain's capacity to focus and solve problems. This occurs even if your phone is turned off, as your mind allocates resources to resist its pull.
   

• Interruptions to Your Focus: Each interruption—whether it’s a Slack ping, an email, or a glance at your phone—causes you to “task switch.” Studies show it takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to fully regain focus after switching tasks.

• Ruining your breaks: Using your phone during breaks feels like downtime, but it’s not. Instead of letting your brain rest, you’re overloading it with new information—emails, social media, or news. With only limited cognitive resources available each day, you’re draining what little you have left when you should be recharging.

The Fix

• Keep Your Phone Out of Sight: The mere presence of a phone reduces your brain’s capacity to focus. Move it out of sight—put it in a drawer or another room.

• Time Block for Deep Work: Set aside dedicated blocks of time for your most important tasks. During this period, no phones, no emails, no news—just you and the big projects that matter. 

• Relearn How to Take Breaks: Instead of reaching for your phone, take a walk in nature. Studies show that even a short stroll outside can reduce stress, improve mood, and restore mental energy. 

Habit #5: Phubbing the People You Love

Phubbing—short for phone snubbing—may seem like a small habit, but it sends a clear message: your phone matters more than the person in front of you.

The Cost of the Habit

• Undermining Real Connections: Research shows that phubbing undermines enjoyment of face-to-face interactions, reduces interpersonal trust, satisfaction in relationships, and friendship quality. One study found that the mere presence of a smartphone — compared to a notebook — led to lower perceived closeness, connection, and conversation quality between partners.

• Negative Role Modeling for Kids: When parents are distracted by their phones during interactions, children can feel neglected, leading to increased behavioral issues like attention-seeking, emotional insecurity, and even aggression. Over time, these interruptions not only harm emotional bonds but can also encourage kids to adopt similar unhealthy phone habits.

The Fix

• Make Shared Time Phone-Free: Establish “no-phone zones” during meals, conversations, or family activities. Putting your phone away sends a clear message: the people in front of you matter most. A simple rule, like “no phones at the table,” can have a profound impact on fostering stronger bonds and deeper connections.

• Set an Example for Others: Children learn by observing their parents. Being present can go a long way for their emotional needs of trust, security, and belonging. In turn, you help them develop healthier relationships with others — and with technology itself.

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OUR TOP 5 RECOMMENDATIONS OF 2024

• The best book we read this year? Without a doubt, Deep Work by Cal Newport. In a world that’s constantly pulling your attention in every direction, Newport’s strategies for cultivating deep, uninterrupted work are a game changer. If there's one book to start 2025 with, it’s this one.

• Screen time trackers on iPhone and Android give you numbers — but they don’t help you actually change. That’s where Opal comes in. It’s like an upgraded tracker with teeth: weekly reports, global average comparisons, and built-in friction to stop mindless scrolling before it starts.

• A shameless plug, yes—but also a genuinely useful starting point for reclaiming your time. Our screen time calculator helps you visualize exactly how much time you’re losing to your phone — how much you could reclaim with small changes.

• App-blocking apps too easy to override? The Brick is a physical block you tap to lock apps on your phone. Social media, email, and other distractions disappear while tools like maps or messages stay accessible. Perfect for a night out or a walk where you actually disconnect.

• One of our favourite podcasts this year dives into why your phone feels impossible to put down. Aza Raskin, the inventor of infinite scroll, teams up with Natasha Dow Schüll, the leading expert on slot machine psychology, to explore how tech companies use the same addictive tricks as casinos to keep you hooked.