Student Resources

Disable non-essential notifications (sounds, banners, vibrations, etc.). 

• iPhone: Settings - Notifications

• Android: Settings - Apps & Notifications - Notifications

"Every day, billions of us receive smartphone notifications. Designed to distract, these interruptions capture and monetize our time and attention. Though smartphones are incredibly helpful, their current notification systems impose underappreciated, yet considerable, mental costs; like a slot machine, they exploit our inherent psychological bias for variable rewards." In a research study conducted by students at Duke and Georgetown University, they found that participants who received notifications only three times a day "felt more attentive, productive, in a better mood, and in greater control of their phones (Fitz et al., 2019). 

Enable your phone's screen time tracking and set limits on specific apps. 

• iPhone: Screen time tracking: Settings → Screen time → Turn On Screen Time (if disabled)

• Android: Screen time tracking: Settings → Digital wellbeing & parental controls → Manage your data → Enable “Daily device usage”

• Android: App limits: Settings → Digital wellbeing & parental controls → Dashboard → (Choose app) → Tap hourglass

Limiting screen time for certain apps and tracking screen time significantly reduces loneliness, depression, anxiety, and FOMO (fear of missing out). (Hunt et al., 2018)

Keep your phone on silent, turn off vibrate, and put it out of reach when going to bed. You can keep your phone in another room or somewhere just out of reach. 

Avoiding smartphones and screen time in general at night can improve your sleep and quality of life. (Hughes & Burke, 2018). 

It can also be helpful to adjust your phone's screen lighting at night. "Apple, Amazon, and Android devices all allow you to make nighttime lighting changes to most models, so look in your settings. On an iPhone, for instance, go to “Display & Brightness” and schedule “Night Shift” to come on during certain hours (like 10 pm to 7 am), which reduces the amount of blue light and gives the screen an amber tone" (Bianchi & Stewart, 2018).

Grayscale can reduce screen time, smartphone addiction, and anxiety" (Holte et al., 2020, 2021).

• iPhone: Settings → Accessibility → Display & text size → Color Filters → Enable “Color filters” → Choose “Grayscale”

• Android: Settings → Digital wellbeing & parental controls → Bedtime mode → Customize → Enable “Grayscale”

In a study done by students and faculty at the University of Kentucky on the effects of grayscale filters among other screen time changes, one participant said, "I noticed that the grey scale on my phone really did make me want to put it down faster. I noticed spending less time on social media because I was frustrated about not being able to see the pictures in color" (Cain, Drees, and Meyers, 2022). 

If you're not quite ready to completely delete your social media apps, you can at least make them harder to open. Try deleting social media apps (e.g., Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, Discord, Reddit, etc.) from your home screen to reduce mindlessly opening the apps whenever you open your phone. 

While social media can offer a variety of fun ways to connect with friends and family, these apps seem to negatively impact our social, mental, and emotional health more than they positively impact them (Anderson, Faverio, and Park, 2025). 

A study was conducted in 2013 that people unlocked their phones an average of 110 times a day (Hu, 2013). We might be unlocking our phones to check a message or respond to an email, but a lot of the time we are mindlessly opening our phones and checking apps that lead us to waste more time on our phones. 

• iPhone: Settings → [Face ID/Touch ID] & Passcode → toggle on/off "iphone unlock"

• Android: Settings → Security/Biometrics & Password → toggle off face/fingerprints or delete them

If you want you can also disabling touch for turning your iphone on. This means you can only unlock your phone by pushing the side button and unlocking with face ID or a passcode. 

• iPhone: Settings → Accessibility → disable "Tap or Swipe to Wake."

• Android: Settings → search for "wake" or "gesture" (usually under display, lock screen, or advanced features) → disable "tap to wake," "double tap to check," or "lift to check."

Turn down your phone's brightness and change the color warmth to filter out blue light at night to improve sleep (Chang et al., 2014).

• iPhone: Settings → Display & brightness → Night shift → enable "scheduled"

• Android: Settings → Display → Night light