📱 My Phone Confession: Why I Deleted Every Social Media App (And What It's Taught Me)

I've always battled to control my phone usage, and especially Social Media - some of you might remember my "social media free Sundays" from years back - that was me, early on, already sensing the danger of losing control, but recently I've found social media harder and harder to come away from.

I genuinely don't know if it's the algorithms getting smarter, or me getting weaker. Probably a bit of both. Either way, it crept up on me, and I wanted to nip it in the bud before it became a proper problem.

The stat that really sealed it for me:

The average person spends 32 days a year scrolling social media.

A whole month. Of your one life. Gone, into a feed.

That hit me hard. Because I've only got so many years in the tank, and I definitely don't want to look back one day and think, "well, at least I really nailed my Instagram scrolling."

The Wake-Up Call

It wasn't just this one single stat that got me, but a few things really pushed me to take more drastic action than I ever had before:

The kids thing. There's a video I saw once that properly stuck with me - every time you're on your phone while your kid's talking to you, you're basically telling them "this phone is more important than you right now." I hated that. Genuinely hated it. I don't want my kids growing up thinking a screen beats their dad's attention.

Reading Digital Minimalism. Great book. Basically opened my eyes to the fact that some very smart people in Silicon Valley are paid a lot of money to keep me staring at an app for as long as possible. Once I saw it that way, I didn't want to play along anymore.

Just… noticing. I'd go on my phone to do one specific thing, and next thing I know twenty minutes have vanished and I couldn't tell you what I actually did. Sound familiar?

What I Actually Did About It

I'm not one for half measures, so here's where I've landed:

1. No social media apps on my phone. None. Not Instagram, not Facebook, nothing. I'm still active on there, my business genuinely runs through social media, so I'm not disappearing off it. Just now, I add posts through other tools instead of opening the apps and getting sucked into the feed. (Meta Business Suite and Buffer for anyone interested)

2. Screen time widget, front and centre. It's the first thing I see when I unlock my phone. No hiding from it. Some days it's a smug six minutes. Other days, less smug. Either way, I can't kid myself.

3. A real target: under 1 hour a day. Not a vague "I'll try and cut down." An actual number. Some weeks I've nailed it - 27 minutes average one week. Other weeks I've crept up. But having the target means I notice when I'm drifting, instead of just letting it happen.

4. The phone goes in a drawer. Especially around my kids. I can't avoid using my phone completely, nobody can these days, but I can stop it sitting between me and them. Out of sight, out of their eyeline, out of the moment we're actually in.

It's Not About Hating Your Phone

I want to be really clear here: I'm not anti-phone. Phones are brilliant.

Sat nav, online coaching, staying in touch with people I love, running my business — none of that happens without my phone. This isn't about ditching it and going off-grid.

It's about being the one in control of it, rather than the other way round.

Why I'm Telling You This

Because I think most of us treat our phone habits like a dirty little secret. Nobody wants to admit their screen time. But here's the thing:

Phone usage is like anything else in your health. You can't fix what you won't look at.

We'll happily tell a coach we're struggling to fit in three workouts a week. But how many of us have looked honestly at how much time we're handing over to a feed instead?

So here's my challenge to you, same as I'd set a client: screenshot your screen time this week. Just look at it. No judgement, no shame, just information. Then ask yourself the same question I asked myself:

If you traded even half an hour of that scrolling for something else like a walk, cooking a proper meal, playing with my kids, would my life be better for it?

I already know my answer. I reckon you might know yours too...

FRANK

your Personal Trainer / Social Media Swerver

Wanna dive deeper into the conversation? Listen to this weeks Episode of Voice Of Fitness Reason (#95) where me and KBC chat all things phones:

Also available on Spotify / Apple / Amazon Podcast Players.