Quitting Scrolling- My Digital Minimalist Setup

My smart phone and laptop are now actually dumb.
My devices are setup to give me truly the best of both smart and dumb tech worlds without resorting to using an actual dumb phone. There are a lot of challenges, and videos online that show how to “dumb down” your smart phone or using a “dumb smart phone” temporarily. Unfortunately, most of these really don’t eliminate mindless scrolling entirely. They also don’t often last as lifestyle either. My setup, I believe has eliminated mindless scrolling from my life and is a part of my life to last. The whole philosophy behind my setup is to make the easy to access distractions more inaccessible, that way the activities which take effort, but are more life giving like reading a book become the go to activities.

Let’s start with my iPhone. My iPhone truly has been turned into a tool without the ability to scroll through mindless content. Using screen time settings I have disabled the browser, and I have disabled the ability to download apps. I did this by setting a password on screentime that I don’t remember. It was written down on a piece of paper that I threw away months ago. I’ve been very happy with my choice ever since. Slowly some of the apps I had even became disabled because I am unable to update apps. That means the amount of apps on my phone can only ever go down as my life gets simpler and simpler. Ultimatley, calling and texting are the two main things I need from my phone anyway. I repeat I cannot download anymore apps unless I factory reset my iPhone. The following are the only apps I have:

1. Airbnb
2. Amikumu (Language Exchange)
3. Amtrak (Train tickets)
4. Audible
5. Authenticator
6. Bandcamp
7. BFF (Making local friends)
8. Books
9. Calculator
10. Calendar
11. Camera
12. Camo (Laptop Webcam Substitute)
13. Capital One
14. Gottman’s Carddecks
15. Chicago Tribune
16. ChiPubLib (Library app)
17. Clear Token (Laundry app)
18. Clock
19. Compass
20. Contacts
21. D&D Beyond (D&D Character Sheets)
22. Dice
23. Dictionary
24. Google Drive
25. Dune (Basic game)
26. Expedia
27. FaceTime
28. FieldLog (Plant ID)
29. Files
30. Find My
31. Fitness
32. Freeform (Drawing)
33. GitHub
34. Goodreads
35. Google Calendar
36. Google Maps
37. Google Photos
38. Google Translate
39. Greyhound
40. Habit (Habit Tracking)
41. Health
42. HelloTalk (Language exchange)
43. Hoopla
44. Indeed Jobs
45. Journal
46. Kayak
47. Klavaro (Esperanto keyboard)
48. Libby
49. Lyft
50. Lyft Driver
51. Magnifier
52. Mealime (Recipes)
53. Measure
54. Messages
55. Music
56. News
57. Notes
58. PayPal
59. Peoples Gas (Gas bill)
60. Phone
61. Photos
62. Podcasts
63. Reacreation.gov
64. Reeder (RSS Reader)
65. Reminders
66. Robinhood
67. Seek (Plant ID)
68. Settings
69. Shortcuts
70. Skyscanner
71. South Shore (Train app)
72. Spotify
73. Stack (Basic game)
74. Stocks
75. TED
76. Tiny Decisions (Random activity chooser)
77. Tips
78. Transit Stop
79. Turo
80. U-Haul
81. Uber
82. Uber Driver
83. Unread
84. Venmo
85. Ventra (Transit app)
86. Google Voice
87. Voice Memos
88. Vrbo
89. Wallet
90. Wavelength (Group game)
91. Weather
92. WebMD
93. Wikipedia
94. Zillow

Almost 90% of these apps probably have never been touched. I just haven’t deleted them yet in case I need them because I wouldn’t be able to get them back. As you can see though, there isn’t any social media or distracting apps of any kind. Every single app has a purpose, and that’s it. Most of my “screentime” is just used messaging my partner and my friends, reading, using maps, or playing music. I never bother worrying about my screentime anymore because none of my screentime is something that I feel needs to be avoided.

Next let’s jump into my computer setup. My computer is also like a dumb computer thanks to the program cold turkey. I highly recommend it. I’ve set my cold turkey to block the entire internet with exceptions for useful websites, and only certain parts of some distracting websites. I have a password set to my cold turkey block which is written on a piece of paper down in my mailbox. Occassionally I come across certain sites that I would like to have access to or that would be useful to have access to for some reason. For example, if I opened a checking account with a bank that I haven’t whitelisted yet on cold turkey. For this reason, I keep a list of sites saved in a notepad doc on my desktop. If I ever encounter one of these sites that I would like to whitelist, I just add it to that list. Then once every few weeks, or if I actually do need to access one of the sites from that list, I’ll go to my mailbox, get that note out and edit the block by adding the rest of those sites to my whitelist.

Let’s go a little deeper into my whitelist, and what my computer usage actually looks like. How do I communicate with people, and what do I even use my computer for? I do use my computer for entertainment and some communicating with others. Movie or tv streaming sites have never been a problem for me, so I have a couple whitelisted, where I watch movies or TV shows with my partner or friends. They’ve never been a problem because I only ever use movies or tv as a way to socialize with others. I’ve never been much of binge tv watcher.

But what about YouTube?
My biggest distraction online has been YouTube, but it’s definitely useful sometimes. I’ve found it very helpful to just whitelist certain parts of YouTube. For example, I just have my watch later list and my subscriptions feed whitelisted. I’ve narrowed my subscriptions down to about a dozen channels, so I only get maybe one or two new videos max in my subscription feed a day. This leaves basically nothing to scroll through. If I want to watch any of these videos, since I only have my watch later playlist whitelisted, I have to add them to my watch later playlist and then go there to watch them. Essentially, I can’t search for videos or scroll through tons of videos jumping from one to the other. I also have an extension called DF YouTube which has sidebar videos hidden. The only way I can search and watch videos is to go to my watch later and click to add videos to that. This creates a very underwhelming and slow user experience for YouTube. This makes it so that I only watch YouTube if there is something specific I’m planning on watching. There is no endless stream of content to go through.

What about communicating with others?
Since I don’t have social media, I pretty much just text and call my friends. I use a phone company called Tello which gives me the ability to even call cell phones outside of the US. Having such a digitally minimalist lifestyle I think has freed up a lot of time for me to actually hangout with people. On average I do a couple social things a week (sometimes more!) which is a lot for me as an introvert with a full time job, and an hour long commute. I do however have email and discord that I can only use from my laptop. Discord I have narrowed down to 13 servers, each one dedicated to a specific niche hobby or interest of mine. Those are the only servers I have whitelisted, no meme or socializing servers.

That’s pretty much the unique things about my setup. I really have nothing to distract myself with on my computer or phone. Both only have useful things on them, with no short form content. The only exception and “hole” in my setup has been my partner’s laptop. No more than once every week or two, I have a “cheat day”, and scroll through distracting YouTube videos on her laptop. From here on out though, now that I’ve perfected this nice setup, I’m not going to use her laptop at all other than for recording videos in Esperanto using her nice webcam. Other than that, my setup is pretty airtight, and I’m very happy. Ever since I made a Facebook when I was 12, I’ve felt trapped by the increasingly addictive and mindless nature of the internet, but for the first time since then I feel my relationship with the internet is becoming more peaceful and mindful.