Tips for recovering from rife addiction to incessantly demanding cellphones

On a recent trip to Venice I saw a striking sight. Of course, I saw many: the Ponte de Rialto at dusk, the ornate glasswork of Murano, the view over the city from the bell tower of San Giorgio Maggiore, and works by Bosch, Titian and Tintoretto. Lucky me.

But the sight that has stayed with me was plain whenever I rode a vaporetto, Venice’s waterborne answer to the London bus. All around were people pecking at screens.

A few of them, no doubt, were locals who had grown tired of gawping at their own city. But on a weekend in high summer, my guess is that most were tourists. The vaporetto provided them with a magnificent view of a unique city that is neither easy nor cheap to visit. Yet they felt compelled to look away from the vista they had paid so dearly to gaze upon. We are hooked.

Our devices can, at any moment, demand that we focus upon them by flashing, pinging or even vibrating insistently. They are constantly evolving to do so more and more effectively. Phone users in developed countries thus now spend about two hours a day pawing at their little blue screens.

The big tech firms, most prominently Apple, have started to trumpet new distractionfighting features, such as tools that track usage or remind people to stop watching YouTube videos. While welcome, these features have been halfhearted and slow to arrive.

No wonder. Technology companies, notably Facebook and Google, make money by selling people’s attention to advertisers. The more attention they have, the more they can sell. There is a limit to how much people can expect them to help them regain control. Without letting the technology companies off the hook, the main responsibility for managing our attention therefore has to lie with us. And there is plenty that can be done.

If you want your future self to do something, make it easy; otherwise make it hard. Switch off notifications — of course. Make sure the phone automatically reverts to silent mode every night, muting incoming calls and messages. Set up the phone charging station away from the bed. The phone becomes less distracting without the need to exert any willpower.

Tristan Harris, a former Google designer and founder of the Time Well Spent movement, suggests taking things further — putting only basic tools such as a calendar and a camera on the phone’s home screen. He hides icons for distracting apps altogether: if you want to use Instagram, type “Instagram” into the search bar. This works because while the search is quick, it requires deliberate effort.

My fellow tourists, I guess, started by taking photographs. Then their attention leaked: they wanted to post those photographs on social media, and from then they slipped unthinkingly into games or news feeds. Using Harris’s method might have helped.

Notice your emotional state. On holiday I sometimes found it easy to forget about my phone. The exceptions were instructive: a (small) problem arrived on e-mail; I felt slightly anxious, wanted to send a quick response, wanted to alert the necessary people, wanted to see how they had responded, and suddenly I was checking every few minutes until I noticed my own feelings and got a grip.

Keep adapting, because the tech companies certainly will. A few months ago I installed an inbox blocker, a simple plug-in that deflects me from my e-mail inbox by forcing me to click an extra button. After a while I noticed unintended consequences had set in: I had hit a mental block while working, so I would self-medicate by going to check e-mail, where I would be fended off by the inbox blocker and end up checking social media instead. The result: just as much distraction in a less useful form. I have now uninstalled the blocker.

Use social pressure. Platforms such as Facebook, Snapchat and LinkedIn turn reciprocity and fear of missing out into weapons. The most egregious is the Snapchat “snapstreak”, in which you need to keep exchanging messages every 24 hours with a friend to keep the streak going. Some kids will do anything to maintain a streak — including giving out their passwords to let others message when they cannot. Adults may sneer, but only because our own phones are subtler in the way they manipulate our social anxieties.

Social pressure works both ways. Make a point of telling your partner, friends or colleagues that you will not look at your phone during a conversation, a meal or a meeting. Ask them to nag you when you fail — and to remind you to look at the view.

MY FELLOW TOURISTS, I GUESS, STARTED BY TAKING PHOTOGRAPHS. THEN THEIR ATTENTION LEAKED