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Screen Time Zero

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Screen Time Zero is just like Inbox Zero, but instead of ending up at an empty mailbox, you end up unchained from your pacifier.

The Medium Is the Message — And Your Phone Is Talking

Marshall McLuhan famously said, “The medium is the message.” In other words, the medium through which we send and receive information shapes society more than the actual content itself. It’s not the message that changes us—it’s the tools we use to deliver it.

Twitter as an Example

Consider Twitter. The tweets you send are often forgotten moments after you post them. But the platform itself leaves a lasting imprint on society. Twitter taught us to compress our thoughts into 140-character sound bites, to seek validation through likes and retweets, and to normalize trolling strangers. None of these traits are contained in your tweet about dinner or your morning walk—but every time you use the tool, you reinforce them.

The Phone’s Hidden Agenda

If the phone itself is the message, what is its underlying structure? What is it trying to get us to do? The answer is simple: it wants your attention—and once it has it, it never wants to let go. Most apps are designed with two primary goals:

In effect, we’ve traded our attention and opened our wallets to corporations, often without realizing the full cost.

The Illusion of Convenience

Computers make many tasks easier, yet we’ve embraced doing everything on a tiny, inferior interface. The fantasy is that we can work anywhere; the reality is that phone interfaces are optimized for one thing: extracting as much money and time from you as possible.

When an app is built to maximize attention and revenue, new features will only be added if they serve those goals. If you’re waiting for a feature, ask yourself:

If the answer is “no,” don’t expect it to appear. For example, Google once allowed users to block certain sites from search results—a genuinely useful feature. But when they realized many of those blocked sites contained Google Ads, the feature quietly disappeared. (Kagi still offers this, and it’s great.)

Escaping the Trap

If you want to reduce your screen time, put your phone away—literally. Keep it in your backpack. Use a computer for tasks that truly require technology, and read a physical book when you can. The medium shapes the message, and sometimes the best message you can send is silence.

Also, take some time to answer these questions: