When do you use your phone?

[Toki Tora]

It is always "Don't use your phone in the morning", "don't use your phone before bed or at work"... When should you use your phone?

[zonk]

I have my phone set to "do not disturb" for all hours except for one hour before work and one hour after. I leave notifications on all during the weekend since I will commonly have plans and may need to coordinate with friends.

I think the important thing is intentionality. Using your phone first thing in the morning is (probably) a force of habit which needs breaking, same with using it late into the evening and keeping yourself awake. The idea is to reprogram yourself to find other ways to cure boredom than picking up the distraction rectangle and choosing exactly when you want to be online and available.

[Crazyroostereye]

I think the important thing is intentionality.

Pretty much that. The intention why you use your Phone is more important than the when. My Phone is only during Sleeping time on Silent, but the Apps i have on my Phone are purely Messengers to communicate with Friends and Family or Utility Apps that server a Particular Purpose (Banking, Monitoring of Home Lab, etc.).
And all these Apps I curate what Notifications are allowed to be sent and which arent. Socials are usually disabled on my Phone.

The intention why you use your Phone is the primary Factor, if you use your Phone first thing in the morning to go on your Socials or watch YT, then there might be an Issue.
But if its only as a Checkup about the Weather or Messages from Friends/Family for Plans or so then I don't see the Issue.

[bubbafinches]

I think you make a good point that there are a lot of rules around when to use or not use phones that people throw out there. Im not a huge fan of how these 'rules' are applied as a one-size-fits all, and treated as if they will solve all your problems. I never really found them easy to follow. even with a dumbphone, I still use it in the morning or at night, but now it's more about WHY Im using it. if I wanna shoot a text to a friend before bed? sure! or confirm plans with someone when I wake up? yeah!!

Buuuuuut i think that the "dont use your phone in the morning/before bead" can really be a helpful general rule if a smartphone is involved. its SO easy to get caught up in a Scroll Hole on virtually any app. At least, it was really easy for me to do that, so sometimes trying to read a book instead or not have my phone on my bedside table helped (eventually though it proved not enough for my addiction, so I needed some harder lifestyle changes through things like a dumbphone. Kinda felt like being an alcoholic and going to bars anyways all the time and trying to stay clean- if I had my smartphone around all the time and I if I was using it 'just' for necessary tasks). I DID notice too that, if I did use my smartphone in the morning, my day started out feeling worse than the days that I'd kept off it in the mornings. Im talkin like, wake-up-and-open-social-media-apps kinda thing. it felt like I started the whole day nerfed. And if I was on it at night, it would be really hard to not just get into a scroll hole, or even an info hole if I was looking up stuff online. Thus losing sleep, etc etc.

So basically, do or did I follow those rules well? No, lol. Do I think there's some merit to them? yeah. But apply as is fit for your life and what you can handle. At the very least those 'rules' helped me identify where the hotspots were in my life. I tried to adjust based on that awareness and found that a bigger solution was necessary. Also, there are definitely folks out there who can be on their phones in the morning and at night and not feel the way I did, and more power to them.

[Kolev]

I keep my mobile device, a Pixel 4a, tucked behind my real phone, a Western Electric 2500. I only get it out to take photos, because I currently do not have a real camera.

To complete the 80's look, I got a Rolodex to sit next to the phone.