6
votes
'Digital nutritionist’ offers advice on cutting down screen time
Link information
This data is scraped automatically and may be incorrect.
- Title
- Switch your phone to greyscale and prune your algorithm, says UCL expert
- Authors
- Sally Weale
- Published
- May 3 2025
- Word count
- 706 words
Am I only one that's frustrated and really dislikes the mixing of terms when it comes to the screen time discussions? There are downsides to looking at a screen, and there are downsides to looking at social media - and probably a million different nuances, but these articles often mix these things together like it's all the same. Case in point, the headline in this article is about screen time, but all the content is about improving "your algorithm".
I think most of the reference to the algorithm talk is about removing 'quantity' producers. If you follow two YouTubers, instead of twenty, you'll naturally spend less time on YouTube because they only put something out once a week - thereby reducing screen time. Instead of focusing on cold turkey, the article advises you to decide what you REALLY want to watch and not just what came out this week.
This particular is, ironically enough, pretty much ignoring the existence of the YouTube algorithm, though. YouTube and pretty much every other site will recommend similar videos by people you don't follow all the time. If you subscribe to twenty YouTubers and only watch videos from those you subscribe to, you'll almost definitely watch far less YouTube than someone who subscribing only two YouTubers but watches videos that appear on the home page or in the sidebar. If anything, subscribing to fewer channels incentivizes you to watch the videos suggested by the algorithm rather than just browsing your subscriptions. It's hard to tell from this article, but I suspect avoiding these algorithmic recommendations is the real focus of the book.
Its the same problem as cable TV, theres always something on so you really could just spend your entire life in front of the TV and some people do that.
I feel like anyone who doesn’t want to spend their entire life watching Youtube will just… stop doing that.
Point taken. Thanks for the comment.
I find a lot of the discussion about screen time and algorithms too catastrophic or un-nuanced, but I did really like this bit:
My principal annoyance with a lot of people who advocate highly restricting screen time, smartphones, and/or online freedom more general for children is always that they completely abdicate any responsibility for teaching their kids healthy online habits and how to think critically about how they interact with these technologies and spaces. It's too often basically the equivalent of abstinence-only sex ed for online spaces, and it means that once they're older teens and adults they're less equipped to handle the dangers. I like that this author is placing emphasis on education and learning critical thinking about digital choices rather than just recommending not giving kids smartphones.
I have experienced this myself to an extent with my own phone usage, and it was self inflicted. For my last year in a post-secondary program I was taking in my mid 20s, I left my phone in my locker. I notified those in my life who are most likely to reach me, that I would not be able to respond right away, but would respond within an hour or two. This worked great and I got my phone usage under control, until I got home. The problem was that when I got home and had instant access to my phone, my phone usage was the same or higher than before I started putting my phone in my locker at school. Overall, my phone usage went down, but only in certain environments. It requires building up the self-control to limit, and that takes dedication, effort, and time. Going from no access to complete access does not normally lead to good outcomes, and other things have to be done in place. I appreciate that this author includes the responsibility of informing their kids, instead of just restricting access.
I also particularly worry about this in the context of online grooming. It's not something that goes away when your kid is old enough to use the internet, whether it's with your permission or without your knowledge or once they turn 18, and the consequences can be dire even if you're not young enough for the other party to be committing a crime. We need to educate kids on what to look out for and how to keep themselves safe online as early as we can, whether or not they have access to smartphones yet.
Yeah, that is why I appreciated the author of the article talk about how banning technology does not absolve parents of the responsibility of educating healthy technology habits.
The idea of setting your phone to greyscale as mentioned in the article is a good idea, but it has flaws as someone who has used greyscale on their phone. I use Android, and on one phone I could toggle it on/off with triple tap of the power button. This was useful as some content lacks readability in greyscale, so occasionally it needs to be toggled off. However, it was too easy so I toggled it more than necessary. On my current temp phone, I have not learned the shortcut to toggle it on/off so if I need to toggle it off, it is more of a process as I need to go into settings.
Overall, I do recommend greyscale on phones. The basic smartphone tasks are still easy to do (phone, text, internet search, email, music, and navigation) but the entertainment endless scrolling is less appealing. However, the shortcuts to toggle on/off do make it less effective of a strategy so I would recommend not enabling those.
I have "bedtime mode" set on my current android, which turns the screen grayscale at a certain time before bed, and afaik the only way to toggle it is by pausing or turning off bedtime mode, which adds a little friction at least. idk if there's another easy shortcut like that on my phone, though.
I am using greyscale through accessibility settings, which on some versions of Android does have a toggle. I have previously done greyscale through bedtime mode as well, and I believe the toggle does not work for that.