A Solution to Addiction

 A study from 2024 found that 45% of Gen Z and 39% of millennials were actively trying to reduce their screentime, a number I can only imagine is increasing daily. My rationale had less to do with being anti-phone - I don't think every second spent on a screen is inherently harmful - but more to do with the free time I was losing. There was a richer life being sacrificed for what was mostly a mind-numbingly bad habit.

The prevailing argument for how to resolve phone addiction is that all you need to do is just stop... We're told it's a matter of grit and discipline, something most of us simply lack. There is now a thriving industry of apps and technology dedicated to getting you off  your phone, which operate on this vague assumption...

These interventions do work for some people. But for most, they serve as a Sisyphean torment: that even if you do briefly log off, you find the nothingness excruciating and are struck with how badly you are itching to return. You're also confronted with frustration and shame - left wondering how, as  a fully grown adult, you've ended up with a child's attention span. These apps might know what gets you off your phone but rarely do they offer something that kills the desire to keep going back...

A Welsh Interior
Edward John Cobbett (1815-1899)
Photo Credit :York Museums Trust  [Public Domain] 

What got me there in the end had nothing to do with willpower or self-flagellation. It was an accidental leap: when my aunt came to visit in October, she gifted me needles, yarn, her expertise and a new rhythm of life.

Despite a severe allergy to most things trad and twee, in knitting I have found what I can sincerely call a passion. It has me up early before work, stitching in the dark, often in happy silence. It's how I fill every idle moment, often feeling the click of needles in the time in-between like a phantom pain.

What I didn't mean to find was a way to decimate my screentime. After two weeks, the time I spent scrolling had halved. My keenness to check emails or Instagram had evaporated...

In all the discussions about how to resolve our reliance on screens, an austerity mindset has drowned out a far more effective argument that, rather than punish ourselves, we should pursue the thrill of something new - an activity that reshapes our attention without us even noticing.

(Sarah Manavis, The Observer, 2025)

Many roads lead to Rome. Giving up smoking or alcohol or cutting back on screentime can be achieved in many different ways. But, there must be a common theme and that is that you acknowledge the problem and that you really do want to change your behaviour. It must be wholehearted. Then it could be that willpower plays a major part. or finding a replacement for your addiction. That replacement could well be writing or reading or indeed knitting but that replacement will be for some people but not all.