Should quitting your phone be this hard? A founder’s answer

By Eli Singer, founder of Offline.now, creator of the Offline.now Matrix and author of Offline.now: A Practical Guide to Healthy Digital Balance.

The Harvard Gazette asked this week whether quitting smartphones should be this hard. The people it quoted gave good answers about plans, and about workplaces that will not let go. I want to answer the question itself. It should be this hard, because quitting is the wrong goal.

Look at the numbers the Gazette cited. The Pew Research Center found in 2026 that 53 percent of U.S. adults say they spend too much time on their phone, and 45 percent tried to cut back in the past year. Of those who tried, one in four called it extremely or very successful. One in four is the willpower rate. It is what you get when motivated people set a rule and then meet a Tuesday.

Here is what I see in the other three: people starting from the wrong place. The Offline.now Matrix is a self-reflection framework that maps your motivation to change your phone habits against your confidence that you can, and sorts the result into four types, each with its own starting place. Most of the people who have tried and slipped are Overwhelmed: Overwhelmed means high motivation and low confidence, so you genuinely want to change, and what you’ve tried hasn’t stuck. Quitting is the hardest possible first step for that type, so they take it, miss, and learn one more time that they cannot do this.

A quitting frame also ignores the best evidence we have. In the one randomized trial I keep coming back to, Castelo and colleagues (2025) had 467 adults block mobile internet for two weeks. Most improved. Only a quarter kept the block on for ten of the fourteen days. The study worked because the environment changed, with a start and an end, and it worked for people who slipped. Nobody quit anything.

So my answer to the Gazette’s question is that quitting is a Ready person’s project, and most of us are not Ready yet. The step that holds is the one you can win this week. Charge the phone in the hallway tonight and keep it there for a week. Confidence comes from a step that held, and the next step comes from confidence. Lasting change runs on confidence, not willpower.

The free quiz at Offline.now takes two questions and less than a minute. It shows you your type, whether that is Stuck, Overwhelmed, Ready, or Unconcerned, and points you to your starting place. After the quiz, the Offline.now Program is the next step. If you have already tried everything, this is what actually works when nothing else has.

Eli Singer is the founder of Offline.now Inc. and the creator of the Offline.now Matrix. He is a coach trained at Adler and spent 25 years in attention and marketing before that. He speaks and writes about healthy digital balance, and he is available to journalists at his Offline.now profile.

Curious about the data?

Pew Research Center (2026). About half of Americans say they spend too much time on their smartphone. Bishop, W., Sidoti, O., and Anderson, M. pewresearch.org

Castelo, N., Kushlev, K., Ward, A. F., Esterman, M., and Reiner, P. B. (2025). Blocking mobile internet on smartphones improves sustained attention, mental health, and subjective well-being. PNAS Nexus, 4(2), pgaf017. https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgaf017

Lamodi, S. (2026, October 5). Should quitting smartphones be this hard? Harvard Gazette. news.harvard.edu

Offline.now provides coaching-oriented guidance, not diagnosis or medical advice. If digital habits are creating significant distress, working with a qualified practitioner is a strong next step. The Offline.now expert directory is a good place to start.