I bought my first phone 25 years ago. It was a Nokia 3310, and despite its lack of a color display and very limited set of features, it still occupies the top spot in the list of my favorite phones I’ve ever owned. I also wish I still had it in my possession, but that’s a story for another time.
Now, if you had told me at the time that my future self would need a dedicated app to keep my phone use under control, I wouldn’t have believed you. First of all, apps on phones weren’t even a thing, so that whole concept would have been alien to me.
Secondly, the phone could pretty much only make calls, receive and reply to texts, and, of course, there’s the famous Snake game that everyone absolutely loved, including me. Suffice to say, there wasn’t a huge amount to captivate my attention, and doomscrolling wasn’t even a thing yet.
Homescreen heroes
This is part of a regular series of articles exploring the apps that we couldn’t live without. Read them all here.
But the reality is that for many of us, we need help to temper our phone use. Sheer determination and self-will are rarely enough. That’s why I’m glad for the One Sec app that I’ve been using recently. It’s not the only app of its kind, but it’s definitely one of the best.
Designed to make you pause
One Sec takes a scientific and psychological approach to kicking the phone and social media habit. Social media and many other apps work on providing instant gratification through dopamine release. The more we feel gratified, the more we scroll, and the longer we indulge. It’s a seriously addictive habit that many of us, understandably, don’t like.
One Sec aims to break that cycle by interrupting the instant gratification process. It does this by making you wait longer for social media apps, or any app you choose, to open. As a result, your brain will lose interest in those short-term dopamine hits.
It’s a super simple idea, but does it work? According to a peer-reviewed scientific study with the Max-Planck Institute and Heidelberg University, the answer would be “yes”, but I didn’t want to just take their word for it. I proceeded to download the app and added Instagram to the list of apps I wanted to use, perhaps, a little less.
Was a simple pause enough?
Adding apps is actually a little bit more complicated than I would have liked, but once they’re set up, One Sec takes care of the rest. The process involves using your phone’s ‘shortcuts’ functionality, which lets you set up an automation every time the social media app is opened. In this instance, I was telling One Sec to run its ‘pause’ sequence every time I opened Instagram.
Thankfully, there are handy how-to apps inside the One Sec app that guide you through the whole process. In reality, it probably took me around a minute to implement for each app.
With everything up and running, I was surprised how effective it was. Being forced to pause before the app would open was enough to short-circuit the process and cause me to think twice about whether I wanted to proceed or not. The pause only takes around seven seconds, but that was enough of an interruption for me.
Blocking apps to really cut ties
Alongside the main ‘pause’ feature that One Sec provides, you’re also able to hard block apps. This is made possible by adding apps to the iOS Screen Time app. While an app is blocked, it’ll appear greyed out, and the app is overlaid with a shield that prevents you from using the app.
I found that this feature was helpful for dictating which apps I was or wasn’t allowed to use at specific times of the day. Making use of this alongside the primary One Sec feature of pausing before opening provided a doubly effective way of tackling the problem.
Is it time for you to take action?
The One Sec app is an intervention that gives you the chance to pause and think twice. It puts you back in control and interrupts the release of dopamine hits that keep you addicted. Compared to most apps of this type, which focus only on blocking apps, I was surprised at the effectiveness of this ‘interruption’ approach.
One Sec is available for free but is incredibly limited. To properly target social media and app overuse, you’ll need the Pro version, which costs $2.99/£2.99 per month. That doesn’t sound like too much for an app that’s going to stop you wasting a whole lot of time.
With online users, on average, spending 17 hours per week on social media, maybe now is the time to do something about it.
You can download the One Sec app on iOS or Android.
