My name is Jane and I'm a senior with a serious phone habit.

Dear Friends,

I have a phone habit. It compels me to check in, probably several times an hour. I am not in the cult of the classic social media, of Facebook, of Instagram, of TikTok. I've weaned myself off those, and I haven't missed them.

My bete noir is checking any incoming: stats on Substack, my steps walked, emails, messages, WhatsApp, the weather. I feel compelled to answer communications at the moment they fall into my inbox

I know nothing would happen if I deferred, but I can’t shake the sense that I’m optimizing my time and productivity by real-time, immediate responses.

Old habits die hard.

My captors include Podcasts and late-night audio stories, which I’m not counting as a habit (see what I’m doing?) but do suggest, based on my phone usage stats, that I sleep approximately 5 hours in 24. I sometimes forget to set the timer and they drone on.

I decide a cleanse is in order. The following is excerpted from my voice diary from the first few days.

A gorgeous Sunday morning; as good a time as any to start the phone cleanse - or at least “canary flutter.” I’ll try for a full-on retreat during daylight hours. I start with the enthusiastic and optimistic sense that “how hard can this be?” - aka “What habit?”

I’m tracking for the next few days - leaving for the UK on Tuesday, the 19th. I’m thinking the travel/time change/excitement about seeing the Grands will actually take precedence over my obsessive attenntion to my phone.

8:30 am: I thought I’d just do one spin through before I put it away. I read “Modern Love” (NYT column), of course, looked at Substack stats. Did I mention I’m a serial stat-checker?

9:16 am: Well, that didn’t last very long. Got an email notification from Paula - had to check her summary of the event she hosted Saturday night. Ok. Putting it down

3:54 pm: I checked at midday, then went to the movies. I resisted the impulse to check at the theatre. Afterward, I just resisted the impulse to check anything. It's such a habit. And, like any habit that's hard to break. You need to be extremely conscious of it.

9:35 pm: I checked it only once, at 5:30 pm. Pretty good, for me. Now it’s time for some quality podcast listening as Sunday winds down, and I move into “bedtime stories” from my audio book collection.

I don’t want to call myself an “addict” - it’s just a phone - but I’m certainly an overuser. An uncontrolled user. It has become a distraction. It cuts into my productivity (edited - never mind what I said above about “productivity”)

It has become a thoughtless practice that provides no real information. So, I want to make a very intentional change, not to be so phone-dependent. Further, I don’t want to get that chummy with Claude.

What could possibly change in 20 minutes other than Trump’s mind?

8:20 am: Did my usual scan this am - Substack, NYT, morning podcasts that start my day - check email - nothing big, same for texts. Did the NYT games. Ok, that’s allowed.

This focused awareness of my phone habit has shed new light on what I think affects many older people who live alone, as I do.

We come to regard our phones as our connection to the larger world.

While I don’t follow Instagram, I’m often the only person among my friends who hasn’t seen the latest product/trend/celebrity gossip posted there.

We start to depend on the phone as a distraction, searching for something new, when it’s actually just regurgitating most everything we already know.

In truth, I believe we’re cordoning ourselves off from real life, the very thing we might criticize younger people for doing.

4 pm: I’ve had to be very intentional from the automatic, almost unconscious picking up every half hour or so to see if my world, or that the world at large, has changed. No meteor has landed. The political landscape has not changed, for better or worse.

I’m amazed at how unthinking my habit has become, now that my awareness has kicked in.

Tomorrow will be a long travel day, which will curtail usage. Then the time change will hopefully discourage the constant stat and communication checking as the world to the west of my location begins its own daily cadence.

And besides, what better distraction is there than Charlie, Ava, and Sloane?

Seeing the grandkids and catching up with them outshines and is far more important than picking up the phone.

In a word, I’m not alone.

ConsumerAffairs has published their 2026 findings about seniors and cell phones - a summary of findings:

• Ownership is high. As of 2023, 94% of seniors (65+) owned cellphones, and 76% owned smartphones. It’s safe to assume ownership of smartphones will continue to rise as more people enter the 65+ cohort.

• We’re more like the young-uns than we might believe. 17% of seniors report being solely smartphone-dependent for internet access — second only to the 18–29 age group.

The data management firm Harmony Healthcare IT reported that Seniors’ phone usage averages over 4 hours per day. Experts recommend less than two hours per day.

In a 2025 study, experts concluded that excessive smartphone use can lead to a reduction in physical activity and have a negative impact on daily living activities.

I hope you’re not reading this on your smartphone :).

See you next Saturday,

Living in The 4th Quarter is a reader-supported publication.

It thrives with readers like you.