In the journey of living a good day, there are various villains one might encounter. For instance, sickness may whisper occasionally, melting your physical and mental strength; or its accomplice anxiety might pay you a visit, rendering you incapable of being rational.

But while sickness or anxiety are terrible in the moment, the flipside is that they usually go away. This cyclic period of battles and recoveries allows for multiple learning experiences, such that one can be better prepared to face them in the future. Cyclic natures like these tend to be found in many villains, though particularly dangerous genetic or chronic beasts are immune to this weakness.

Yet, there is one villain that I have frequently been bested by: phone addiction. This villain is sneaky because it has evolved to reside in objects that we increasingly rely on: our phones. So while other villains pop up periodically, this beast is something we encounter every day; and the more reliant we become on our devices, the more we feed the beast; and when the beast gets fed, it tears and rips at the curtains of our day until we are reduced to shreds of who we once were.

Okay, that’s a bit dramatic. But over the last few years, this has really been a huge problem for me.

However, I recently discovered a little antidote for this problem: the Screen Time Widget on iPhone. Basically, what it does is display your phone’s Screen Time on a home page so you can see it whenever you’re accessing your phone. This is what it looks like:

This is game-changing, for one of the most dangerous weapons of phone addiction is unawareness. Social media giants are terrifyingly good at keeping us unconsciously occupied on our devices, allowing the beast to feed through our consumption.

But what the Widget does is exactly the opposite: it provides a clear awareness of our phone usage. And my goodness, has this been amazing. Now, when I see my screen time creeping past an hour (thanks YouTube), I see the visualise the phone addiction beast growing and I set a hard stop for myself.

So, maybe it is this: the power of shining a light on this invisible, insidious beast, that is its weakness. And perhaps after enough blows to the face, I can look this villain in the eye and say that I’ve finally won.