What if there was a way to gain nearly a month of time this semester? What if you could reduce your anxiety and depression while gaining more time to do what you love, all by changing just one thing about your daily life? I’m here to tell you that you can. All you have to do is spend less time on your phone.

If you think about it, the amount of time you spend scrolling adds up rapidly. Each semester most students spend at least 7 hours a day on their phone. That’s 22 days a semester, or (assuming you get around 5 hours of sleep) 36% of your time awake. If you sleep more, which you should, that percentage only goes up. That you’re on your phone that much may be surprising. After all, can you remember spending 22 days on your phone last Spring? The explanation is that screen time, especially short form content, has a negative impact on your memory because the brain is processing far less information than it’s designed to.

Here’s a fun way to demonstrate this yourself. Try and recall all the short videos you watched yesterday. You should be able to remember around 120 videos for every hour you were watching. How many can you remember? If you can only remember 50 or less, then it’s as if you were only present for 9 of those 22 days. That’s as if almost two weeks never existed.

That time is real though, a real chunk of time with massive impacts on your life. Currently, those 22 days are being used in a way that increases depression, anxiety, loneliness, poor academic performance, memory issues, obesity, spinal issues, low self-esteem, and other damaging effects. I doubt that’s what we’re looking for when we pick up our phones, but it’s what the science shows we get. Nevertheless, our society has been redesigned with an understanding that we all have smartphones, meaning that most of us will still live with these devices regardless of what they’re doing to us. That doesn’t mean we can’t do something about it though. Those 22 days don’t belong to your phone, they belong to you. 

College is a time of increased freedom, and there is no sense in selling that to the rectangle in your pocket. If you want, you can give yourself 22 days more this semester. The one way to do it is to spend less time on your phone.

It’s easier said than done, but you don’t have to figure it out by yourself. There are plenty of resources to help you use your tech, rather than be used by it. To get started, here are the four practices I have found most powerful in taking back my life from my phone.

The first is simple: remove the apps you spend the most time on from your home screen and set them to ‘Do Not Recommend’ in the search bar. This way you’ll only open them when you want to, not because you were on autopilot.

The second: make a list of things you like doing when you have free time. Keep this with you (perhaps on your phone) to review when taking a breather. Reminding yourself what you want to be doing is a great kick in the pants to stop scrolling and start doing.

Thirdly: don’t use your phone on the toilet. Quite often sitting on the porcelain throne makes you instinctively reach for the phone but keeping it in your pants can change your life. This gives you time each day for personal reflection.

Finally, if you are with friends, keep the phone away. How often have you found yourself suddenly scrolling when conversation lulls? That’s not time spent with your chums, that’s time spent with your phone. Challenge yourself to pay attention and engage with your companions on a deeper level. This is where you will see the biggest gains in relationships and social skills, while also chipping away loneliness. There is a catch though: this only works if your friend isn’t on their phone either. For their sake and yours, call out your friends when they slip away into cyberspace. Ask them to hold you accountable too.

Give this a shot, and the worst that can happen is you win a few hours back from the void. It’s worth a try. What’s the point of college freedom if you waste it all staring at something you won’t remember? Put down the phone and hang out with your pals, shoot some hoops, or do whatever it is that brings you joy. The unexamined life may not be worth living, but the unlived life isn’t worth examining. So put your phone away and LIVE!