Phone addiction, loneliness and solutions

Written 2025-05-18 · Published 2026-10-17 · Last edited —

Recently, I've fallen back into torture of phone addiction (mainly YouTube) : watching videos until 3 am at night before a weekday and missing the morning plans, consistently sabotaging myself by hacking my own countermeasures for watching YouTube, being late to places I shouldn't... My phone use reflects perfectly my definition of an addiction : an action I keep doing at a price I do not wish to pay.

I've tried to solve this problem for close to 4 years now, after hitting my absolute lowest during one vacation: when I would wake up, I would periodically scroll between YouTube shorts and Instagram reels until dinner, where I would eat like a zombie, then proceed to scroll again until my eyes were shut; summing probably around 12 hours of screen time daily. To illustrate how reinforcing and addictive my phone use was, it is relevant to note that my video game addiction was stopped by the emergence of my phone addiction, like a stoner becoming a junkie. Playing video games or even watching a series was relatively felt far more productive then this vegetative state I was in.

Since then, I've tried numerous countermeasures: gray scale mode, app timer, vanced youtube, deleting Instagram, minimalist phone launcher, and the list goes on. But my actions were not so foolproof that I wouldn't be able to sabotage them, constantly finding shortcuts to my own roadblock. Loosely resembling the omnipotence paradox, it wasn't a easy task for myself to create stones I wouldn't be able to lift.

But to be completely fair, these countermeasures did somewhat help.
Notably, this 3 step protocol has served my pretty good to retrieve my attention:

1. Install modified versions of your problematic apps (vanced youtube, minimalist Instagram, etc..) to get rid of short form content
2. After some time adjusting to the absence of short form content, all the while still accessing "normal" content like youtube videos, try to rather listen to audio books and podcasts.
3. When you feel comfortable with podcasts, you will also find that their absence isn't so displeasing either: disconnect yourself from the digital world.

The essence of this protocol is that it introduces just the right amount of friction: enough to move you away from you vegetative dependent state, but not so strong that you would rather bypass it completely. Step 2 is very crucial, I've found that podcasts especially are the perfect bridge between a fragmented short attention spanned brain to a functional mind.

But quite frustrating as it is, I nonetheless find myself falling back into bouts off excessive phone use: lapsus ranging from weeks to month. Every time I fall back into it, I swear to myself in the most toxic way that I will never do this again, but after weeks, months, or years, inevitably I come back to it. Although I've never had a conventionally serious addiction like abusive substance use, I can only imagine how worst it would be: the idea of having an addiction stronger than my phone is a terrifying thought.

The most recent lapsus I've experienced is recent, and maybe still ongoing. But this time, I believe that I might just have diagnosed the situation: the my phone addiction is not an illness, but a symptom; an effect of a underlying condition. An underlying condition that is distinct from a short attention span, a condition less obvious, and as you might have guested from the title, said illness is called loneliness. This idea of a symptomatic approach was a hypothesis that was gradually forming in my head and completely materialized after listening to the Andrew Huberman Podcast episode "Tools for Overcoming Substance & Behavioral Addictions | Ryan Soave" .

Human's being hyper-social animals, loneliness is a feeling that the brains is highly cautious of: in the ancient world, being isolated meant a very grim chance of survival. In prison, the worst punishment that even the most anti social inmates fear is solitary confinement; relevant to note that the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners prohibits prolonged isolation for 15 consecutive days, and any punishment longer than that is considered cruel and inhuman. In short, isolation and loneliness is psychological torture that our brain has a very hard time to handle.

My hypothesis of the relation between loneliness and phone addiction is pretty simple, and the specificity of my current situation seems to highlight this properly. The two distinct contexts where I am free from phone addiction in one, and shackled in the other, differ by the fact that I'm physically alone or not.

In my home country, in the later times of my efforts to break free from phone dependency, I was actually quite successful at my endeavor. I believe that the my social context played a huge factor, mainly with the fact that I lived with other people, my family. On the other hand, I currently live alone in a new country (sorry , but i want to be careful with the personal informaton i share), and this very new feeling of being truly alone, not in a liminal context but in a conclusive one, is something that I have a hard time settling with. I always thought that I liked being alone, that not only was I able to handle it but able to thrive in it, but I've come to the realization that I'm no exception to human nature.

I response to this dread, my mind naturally gravitated towards the pseudo social interaction I get from watching youtube video. As sad as it may sound, I believe that my mind is coping loneliness with fake digital people; it's sad but true, and many of us might not be aware of it.

I noticed this idea not only in the form of my phone use but by it's content. When I would watch youtube in my home country, where my social interactions were flourishing, I would watch more socially abstract videos like essays, math paradoxes and so on. But currently, in the amidst of my lonely room, I mainly watch discussions, interviews or random videos where the persona of the content creator is at the center of the entertainment: I watch a video regardless of the quality of the information but because I watch the content creator.

This also shows in the fact that I absolutely don't feel the urge to watch my phone when a friend comes over to my house; even if said friend might be watching reels, I feel free from it. This is also similarly achieved with video calling or texting as well but it is less potent, talking to a screen doesn't come anywhere close to the physical presence of another person whom I enjoy the presence.

This realization is pretty uncomfortable, but it might be the key to finally break free from the shackles of phone addiction.

I mainly see two ways of solving this equation: an "aesthetic" one and a "moral" one. (I steal from Kierkegaard). Aesthetic solution would be to avoid loneliness by another form of distraction: having friends over, calling a friend, doing a hobby, etc... The "Moral" solution would then be more, like the name suggests, a concept that has the moral high ground: deal with the reality of being alone and have a stoic approach to it, get used to solitude and find solace in it.

Although I call the second solution the "moral" one, I ought to point out that said approach might be implausible, and naturally, I believe in the superiority of the aesthetic solution. As I pointed out earlier, loneliness is a poison deeply rooted in our human nature, and going against it of the sake of moral superiority might be counter-intuitively destructive: I've had a similar experience in the past where I wished to become more independent/distant from my friends as I felt that the friendships were a burden and a logically disadvantageous relationship; as I grew more mature, I deeply regretted that, putting my ego over my psychological well being and over my very real love that I had towards my peers.

Naturally, I shall now explain the the mechanism of the aesthetic solution. The aesthetic solution, even from its name, might seem like a sub optimal approach, cowardice almost: as it is in a way the very avoidance of the feeling of solitude. But I don't not think this avoidance is too be criticized, as avoidance might be bad in the most general situations, avoiding accidents, sickness or even depression are far from vicious. The question is just the practicality of the solution: always having a friend over might be hard, finding a hobby that keeps your mind busy, not so much.