A ninja hack from Agency Titans

Give Agency Back to the People Running the Agency

What I learned taking social media and endless-scroll apps off my phone, and what the research says about it.

Thomas Hays, VP of Sales & Operations, Leads Near Me

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Yes, it's a pun

What I mean by agency

agency /ˈeɪ.dʒən.si/  noun

  1. A business that does work for clients. Like the ones everybody reading this runs.
  2. Your ability to choose what you do, instead of getting pulled around by habits running under the surface.

This page is about getting number 2 back, so you can do a better job running number 1.

The numbers

How much we're on our phones

Reviews.org surveyed about 1,000 U.S. adults in late 2025 about their phone habits. Here's what they found.

186times a day the average American checks their phone
3h 14maverage time on a smartphone each day
45.8%say they're addicted to their phone, up from 43.2% the year before
84.6%check their phone within 10 minutes of waking up

Source: Reviews.org, Cell Phone Usage Stats 2026 (Q4 2025 survey). The screen time figure comes from a separate Reviews.org screen time survey cited on the same page.

Where it goes

Most of it goes to social media and video

eMarketer forecasts that U.S. social media users will spend more than two hours a day on social apps in 2026, and that people who use TikTok will spend about 47 minutes a day on it. (eMarketer)

And the apps know how fast it can happen. In lawsuits against TikTok, the company's own internal research showed people can start forming a habit after watching about 260 videos. Since those videos are so short, state attorneys general said that can happen in about 35 minutes. (NPR)

What I figured out

The problem is the apps

It took me a while to figure this out. My phone itself wasn't really the problem. The apps on it were. Calls, texts, maps, my calendar, my bank. Those are tools. I open them, do what I need, and close them. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and anything with a feed that never ends are different. There's no bottom, so there's never a natural place to stop.

Tools

  • Calls and texts
  • Maps and calendar
  • Banking and email
  • You open it, use it, and close it

Traps

  • Facebook and Instagram
  • TikTok and YouTube
  • Any endless feed
  • No bottom, no reason to stop

By design

In the words of the people who built them

This isn't only a willpower problem. Several people who helped build these products have said publicly that keeping you on them was the point.

"It's a social-validation feedback loop... exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you're exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology."
Sean Parker, Facebook's founding president, 2017. Axios
"The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works."
Chamath Palihapitiya, former Facebook VP of user growth, at Stanford, 2017. Quartz
"It's as if they're taking behavioral cocaine and just sprinkling it all over your interface."
Aza Raskin, who designed infinite scroll, 2018. BBC
"Pull-to-refresh is addictive."
Loren Brichter, who invented pull to refresh, 2017. The Guardian
"They haven't used it. We limit how much technology our kids use at home."
Steve Jobs, when a reporter asked in 2010 if his kids loved the new iPad. The New York Times

At work

What it costs our teams

For an agency, attention is the product. Here's what the research shows happens to it.

71 studies

A 2025 review of 71 studies with more than 98,000 people found heavier short-form video use (TikTok, Reels and similar) was linked to worse attention and self-control. Most of the studies were snapshots in time, so they can't prove cause and effect.

Psychological BulletinPsyPost summary

47 seconds

Gloria Mark at UC Irvine has measured how long people stay on one screen before switching. In her first study, published in 2004, it averaged about two and a half minutes. By 2020 it was 47 seconds.

University of California

Brain drain

In UT Austin experiments with nearly 800 people, those whose phones were in another room did better on tests of working memory than those with their phone on the desk, even when it was face down or turned off.

UT NewsJournal article

3x

At Florida State, getting a call or text notification during a focus task, without answering it, made people about three times as likely to make a mistake.

ScienceDailyJournal article

A University of Virginia and UBC study also found that when people kept alerts on and their phone nearby for a week, they reported more inattention and hyperactivity than in a week with alerts off and the phone away. (UVA)

My last 18 months

What I actually did

About 18 months ago I realized I was right in the middle of those numbers. I felt scattered and pretty anxious most days. I didn't quit cold turkey. I made one change at a time.

  1. Deleted Facebook off my phone.This was the biggest change.
  2. Removed every video app.TikTok, YouTube, all of it.
  3. Put Balance OS on my Samsung.It blocks social media, video, and anything with an infinite scroll. I literally can't get to them. That's why it worked.
  4. Set timers.Daily limits on the apps I still need.
  5. Set boundaries.Times and places where my phone stays put.

A day of rest

One full day off, every week

I also keep Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest, from Friday at sundown to Saturday night. I'm not pushing religion here. For me it works as a pure day of rest: one full day every week where I don't check my phone, I don't scroll, and I don't do anything like that.

You don't have to be religious to take a day off from your phone.

My rule now: if it has an endless feed, it's not on my phone.

What changed for me

  • Better focus. I can stay on one hard thing a lot longer.
  • Better concentration, and I get more done.
  • My anxiety is way down.
  • My working memory is better on calls and in planning.

The research

What happens when people cut back

4 weeks off Facebook

Researchers from Stanford and NYU had 2,743 U.S. adults deactivate Facebook for four weeks. They gained about an hour a day, reported higher well-being, and 80% said it was good for them. Weeks after the study ended, they used Facebook 22% less than the control group. They also knew a little less about current news.

American Economic ReviewChicago Policy Review summary

30 minutes a day

At the University of Pennsylvania, 143 students limited Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat to 10 minutes each per day for three weeks. Compared to students who used them as usual, they had significant drops in depression and loneliness.

Penn news releaseJournal article

2 weeks, no mobile internet

In a 2025 randomized trial, 467 adults blocked internet on their phones for two weeks but kept calls and texts. Screen time dropped from about 314 to 161 minutes a day. 91% improved on mental health, well-being, or attention. The drop in depression symptoms was larger than typical antidepressant effects, and attention gains were about the same as being 10 years younger.

PNAS NexusNews-Medical summary

The quiz

How hooked are you on your phone?

Answer 15 quick questions. The first five are about your actual phone and social media use. The last ten come from the Smartphone Addiction Scale researchers use. You'll get a score and a plan based on your answers.

Tip: Open Screen Time (iPhone) or Digital Wellbeing (Android) in your Settings first. It shows your daily average, your pickups, and your time on each app.

The ninja hack

Five things to start this week

  1. Delete social media apps from your phone

    Start with the one you open the most. If you need it for work, use it on your computer.

  2. Remove video apps like TikTok and YouTube

    Watch on a TV or computer if you want to, where it's harder to lose an hour without noticing.

  3. Make it hard to get back in

    On Android or Samsung, Balance OS blocks social, video, and infinite scroll. On iPhone or Android, a Brick locks the apps you pick until you walk back to it.

  4. Turn off notifications that aren't from a person

    Keep calls and texts from people. Turn off alerts and badges for social media, news, shopping, and games.

  5. Give your phone its own room

    Put it in another room when you need to focus, and keep it out of the bedroom at night.

Giving agency back

Bring it to your team

This is where the name comes from. Our people can't fix this on their own if the agency expects instant replies all day. If we're messaging people at 9 at night, they're going to check their phones at 9 at night. A few companies and researchers have tested what happens when you change that.

Check email 3 times a day

In a UBC study of 124 adults, people had significantly lower daily stress during the week they checked email three times a day with notifications off, and didn't feel any less productive.

UBCJournal article

Predictable time off at BCG

Harvard's Leslie Perlow had consultant teams at Boston Consulting Group take a predictable block of time off each week with no email or voicemail. After five months they were more satisfied with their jobs and more likely to stay with the firm.

Harvard GazetteKnowledge at Wharton

Volkswagen

In 2011, Volkswagen agreed to stop sending email to some employees' phones 30 minutes after their shift ends, and start again 30 minutes before the next one.

BBC

Tools

Tools that help

Balance OS

Android / Samsung

Blocks social media, streaming, gaming, and anything with an infinite scroll. Your home screen is a list of app names, and you type the name to open one. This is what I use.

Balance OSITPro review

Brick

iPhone and Android, $59, no subscription

Tap your phone on it to lock the apps you choose. To unlock them, you have to walk back to the Brick, so keep it in another room.

getbrick.com

Freedom

iPhone, Android, desktop

Blocks apps and websites on a schedule. It's the app researchers used in the 2025 PNAS Nexus study.

freedom.to

Already on your phone

Screen Time / Digital Wellbeing

App timers, Focus or Do Not Disturb, and grayscale. In studies, grayscale cut daily screen time by roughly 20 to 50 minutes.

Grayscale study

Sources

  1. Reviews.org, Cell Phone Usage Stats 2026.
  2. eMarketer, US Time Spent With Social Networks 2026.
  3. NPR, Inside the TikTok documents, October 2024.
  4. Axios, Sean Parker: Facebook was designed to exploit human "vulnerability", 2017.
  5. Quartz, Chamath Palihapitiya at Stanford, 2017.
  6. BBC, interview with Aza Raskin and other tech insiders, 2018.
  7. The Guardian, 'Our minds can be hijacked', 2017.
  8. The New York Times, Steve Jobs Was a Low-Tech Parent, 2014.
  9. Nguyen et al., short-form video meta-analysis, Psychological Bulletin, 2025.
  10. Gloria Mark, University of California interview, 2024.
  11. Ward et al., "Brain Drain," Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 2017.
  12. Stothart et al., The Attentional Cost of Receiving a Cell Phone Notification, 2015.
  13. Kushlev et al., "Silence Your Phones", CHI 2016.
  14. Allcott et al., The Welfare Effects of Social Media, American Economic Review, 2020.
  15. Hunt et al., No More FOMO, Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 2018.
  16. Castelo et al., Blocking mobile internet on smartphones, PNAS Nexus, 2025.
  17. Kushlev & Dunn, Checking Email Less Frequently Reduces Stress, Computers in Human Behavior, 2015.
  18. Perlow & Porter, predictable time off at BCG, Harvard Gazette, 2009.
  19. BBC, Volkswagen turns off Blackberry email after work hours, 2011.
  20. Grayscale intervention study, Mobile Media & Communication, 2023.
  21. Exelmans & Van den Bulck, Bedtime mobile phone use and sleep in adults, Social Science & Medicine, 2016.
  22. Kwon et al., Smartphone Addiction Scale Short Version, PLOS ONE, 2013.