Want to Reduce Your Screen Time? Try This Simple Trick

These days, it’s hard to lead a normal life without spending a large portion of each day staring at a screen. We work on computers, read articles on tablets, and keep up with friends and family via texting.

But, if we’re being honest, most of us aren’t just using screens when it’s necessary. Social media and other recreational apps make it incredibly easy to spend extra hours brainlessly scrolling through content you might not even care about. If you’re looking for a way to cut down on screen time and give those tired eyes a break without swearing off your favorite apps completely, Lifehacker suggests decluttering your home screen.

The idea is that if you don’t see certain time-wasting apps as soon as you unlock your phone, you’ll be less likely to open them. Much like you might walk into the supermarket intending to buy dish soap and walk out with frosted sugar cookies from the front display table, sometimes you pick up your phone to check your schedule and end up killing 20 minutes on Instagram.

It’s up to you which apps you keep in plain sight. Some—like messages, camera, email, calendar, and settings—serve specific, important purposes and don’t lend themselves to endless scrolling anyway, so you may want to keep those as accessible as possible. Everything else can be shifted to the second, third, or even fourth screen.

Of course, an extra swipe or two isn’t an overwhelming obstacle, and you can still check your Twitter timeline whenever you want to. If it’s out of sight, however, you might think twice about opening the app, or you might not remember to check it quite so often.

[h/t Lifehacker]