[franga2000]

I guess it's a good test for something, but I wouldn't call that something "phone addiction". I think wanting to be reachable by friends and family is fine and "addiction" starts when you start compulsively using your phone, like if you're scrolling through [insert social media here].

And phones are much more than content consumption machines - I like having a little pocket camera with me in case a see a new cat in the neighbourhood or something, and looking up bus schedules, renting city bikes, calling a cab, etc. are things I all but need to be able to do when I'm out.

My trick to almost never looking at my phone has been, somewhat ironically, having a smartwatch, as well as carefully curating the notifications I get on my phone. If I know I can't miss an important notification, I'll never even look at my phone, so there's no chance I even see one of those time wasting apps. And when a notification buzzes on my wrist, I can see in a fraction of a second if it's something really important or if it can wait.

[Ajedi32]

Yeah, this feels to me a bit like trying to find out if you're addicted to indoor plumbing by committing to not flushing your toilet for a week.

Maybe if we were talking about social media or some other non-essential service on my phone, but the phone itself is hard to do without because of its practical utility, not because of addiction.

[ikr678]

Being reachable by family and friends 24/7 has only been normal in the past 25 years. For the entire rest of human history, we seemed to do fine without this.

I think it also has changed what our perception of a true emergency is. When I was a kid, if I needed to be picked up from an event, it was on me to be at the pickup point at the right time, and my parent to be there. If for whatever reason we couldnt make it, there was always an alternative plan 'wait at the meetup, wait inside the venue, go home with a friend'.

Not getting picked up and being forced to wait with some uncertainty was not an emergency, it was an inconvenience.

[jszymborski]

Smartwatches similarly have had the same effect for me and I can anecdotally recommend it.

I think another thing to consider is having ways for people to reach you _without_ your cell phone. For instance, I have a home phone, and calling my cell also rings that home phone. You could set up something similar if you have an office phone, or using a softphone on your desktop. That leaves you with instances where you leave home or the office, which are honestly cases where I'm personally least likely to look at my phone because I'm usually doing things that occupy my full attention (unless I'm commuting where I'm often reading a book on my phone).