I have realized that my phone is basically my life. First, it greets me each morning with an eruption of vibrations and squeals on my nightstand. Occasionally, the cacophony wakes me, and I scramble to shut it up. Then, lunchtime rolls around. Naturally, a meal just doesn’t feel right without some doom-scrolling, and gosh, I can’t skip a new one-hour-long Markiplier upload on YouTube right as I prepare to study. Before bed, I set my alarms again, rinse and repeat.
Of course, my experience is far from unique. Scientists — who are also addicted to their phones no doubt — have found that college students average 8-10 hours every day on their devices. So, if you’re enrolled in 12 credits this semester (approximately 36 hours worth of schooling per week) and use your phone eight hours per day, you’re spending 20 hours longer on your phone than learning.
Upon realizing the severity of my phone dependence, I deleted my most-used apps, half-heartedly enforced screen time limits and even used airplane mode when possible. I’m sure most phone users have gone through similar stages of an “anti-phone” mentality: First, you realize you use it too much, so you try some hard-to-maintain methods to use it less, but ultimately fail and thus use it more. All of the strategies I tried fell apart for one reason or another. If you’ve tried them, chances are that they didn’t work either. But that was until I discovered one strategy that didn’t fall apart: going grayscale.
This past Tuesday, I encouraged other members of The Daily Campus to attempt the following challenge: For 24 hours, they would set their phones to black and white. Participants then had the option to fill out an anonymous survey detailing their thoughts.
On most smartphones, enabling grayscale is simple. The option can be found in system settings as a toggle, most commonly under display settings or accessibility options. Grayscale, as well as other color filters, are often used as an accessibility feature for those with color-related eye impairments as they increase contrast and improve legibility.
To reduce intensive phone usage and perhaps cease reliance, setting a phone in grayscale has one immediately noticeable consequence: Colors no longer catch your eye.
This sounds like a simple change, but one participant in the challenge noted anonymously, “I honestly thought it would be a big change and I wouldn’t like it, but I didn’t really notice it until I was trying to do things on my phone that required color, like playing games with color-coded items.”
A common fear going into grayscale is that setting a phone to the filter will drastically reduce its functionality or accessibility. However, all integral phone functions are some shade of gray to begin with. On Android devices, the settings menus are typically black with white text, or white with black text — both of which would appear identical with grayscale enabled. The same can be said for IOS devices. For instance, the wifi strength bars, battery icon and keyboard all translate seamlessly to black and white. Only in less common cases such as gaming or perhaps viewing photos do you really need color on your screen.
With that in mind, what are the impacts of using grayscale on screen time? Out of the four individuals who participated in the challenge — which I want to make clear, is far from conclusive — two used their phone slightly less than normal, one said they used it much less than usual and another marked that they used their phone about the same amount. So, the majority of those who took part in this small study noticed an impact.
Regardless, the impact was felt to varying degrees, with one participant noting, “It didn’t reduce my screen time as much as I had hoped, even watching videos and looking at social media posts in black and white didn’t bother me.”
I think this touches upon a central flaw here: The grayscale technique doesn’t really change anything about your phone’s functionality. If you’re committed to playing a mobile game, chances are you will still find a way to play it even if it’s in black and white. Furthermore, if you’re doom-scrolling, the black-and-white color scheme may do nothing except make it even gloomier.
Another respondent stated that during the 24 hour period, “I tended to pick up my phone less, but while using it, I felt little difference. My Pokémon Go experience was also diminished.” No doubt catching shiny Pokémon — who often depend on slight color variations to stand out — would prove more difficult.
However, for participants who didn’t have games to play, or perhaps used their phones for less involved media consumption, responses indicated that the strategy worked — they used their phones less. “I loved it! It made me spend way less time on my phone and encouraged me to look for other things to do when I was bored rather than scrolling on social media,” replied one participant when describing their experience.
Of course, everyone uses their phone differently, so any strategy is a hit-or-miss for each individual even if it generally tends to work for others. For instance, if you’re someone who has other technology around, you may have a similar experience to this participant: “It did deter me from using my phone less, but that only made me want to use my computer more.”
Sadly, a solution to this seamless swap between devices is hard to pinpoint. College life revolves around a phone, sure, but it equally revolves around a laptop, TV and desktop computer. Maybe a more intensive solution lies in just removing technology entirely, but that may be an impossible task.
Participants did, however, note some interesting caveats to grayscale. While generally in favor of the change, one participant emphasized a downside: “I really liked doing this because it encouraged me to look for alternatives when I was bored. The only thing that was kind of weird (but honestly helped me stay off my phone) was after spending a few minutes on my phone and then looking back up I expected things to be grayscale irl and had to take a sec to let my eyes adjust.”
I’m unaware of research done on the negative effects of black-and-white screen usage, but I am aware of phone screens’ harmful impact on eye health. Another response indicated that at 12:28 p.m., far into the challenge’s duration, “[Grayscale] is better for your eyes due to the lack of blue light.” While I cannot scientifically confirm this, the increased contrast of grayscale can allow for lower screen-brightness levels, something I’ve personally noticed. This would, in theory, help reduce the strain of blue light on your eyes.
Finally, the participants responded to the most telling question: “Would you try using grayscale again in the future?” To this prompt, given the answer options yes, no, and maybe, it was a 50-50 split between yes and maybe responses. Generally, this little grayscale experiment was a success. Participants generally noticed an impact and many seemed open to trying it again.
So, while it’s no shock to find out you have an incredibly constricting mobile device nestled in your pocket, hopefully it was a surprise to hear of a technique that has the potential to alter your phone-use dependency. Give grayscale a try, it could just be the change you’ve been needing this winter.