Five Things I Learned by Being Bored and Deleting Buzzfeed

I remember VHS, cassette tapes, CDs, and floppy disks. I had a flip phone for years, and I thought it was so cool when peoples’ pictures would pop up when they called me. I mean — what awesome technology, right?

Fast forward twenty years, and the grandkids of all that once-revolutionary technology are more like companions than tools. Who do we turn to on a boring elevator ride to avoid talking to real people? What do we use to share really unattractive pictures with our friends? How do we get from our house to that new tapas place downtown when we don’t know the way by heart?

Our phones, of course.

But don’t we all have some inkling that this nearly sycophantic reliance on our phones is problematic?

Enter the Bored and Brilliant challenge — which aims to help us redefine our relationship with technology in a healthier, more sustainable way through a weeklong series of increasingly more difficult tasks. I took this on, and I learned a whole lot.

Challenge #1: Observing my phone habits

The first challenge was simple: just observe myself. I downloaded an app called Moment which tracks my phone usage — including the number of pickups per day and the total amount of screen time.

Before starting the challenge, I didn’t really think my phone habits were that out of control. Sure, I tend to scroll mindlessly through Twitter while also…