Reading without the internet: a three-month experiment

In April, I set up a screen time rule on my phone: all browsers blocked from 9pm to 9am. No Safari, no Chrome, no sneaky workarounds. Social media apps were already gone — I deleted those years ago. This was about the last frontier: the aimless late-night browsing that ate an hour every evening without me noticing.

The first week

Miserable. I picked up my phone roughly forty times the first evening, each time remembering that there was nothing to open. The reflex is extraordinary — it's not that I wanted to read anything specific. I just wanted the scroll. The feeling of content moving past my eyes.

By day three, I picked up a book instead. Not out of virtue, but out of boredom. And that was the whole trick.

What I read

Twenty-three books in three months. Some highlights: a collection of Ursula Le Guin essays that made me want to write more, a history of urban planning in Tokyo that I bought on a whim and couldn't put down, and two novels that I stayed up too late finishing — which felt like a victory, not a failure, because at least I was staying up late for a reason.

What changed

The obvious thing: I read more. But the less obvious thing was better. My attention span improved. Not dramatically, not in a way I could measure, but I noticed it. I could sit with a long paragraph again. I could follow an argument across ten pages without my mind reaching for something else.

I also slept better. This surprised me. I hadn't thought of the evening browsing as disruptive — it was just lying in bed looking at a screen. But removing it meant I fell asleep faster and woke up less groggy. The blue light thing might be real after all.

Three months later

I kept the rule. It's still active. I've relaxed it slightly — if I need to look up something specific (a recipe, a word), I'll use my laptop. But the phone stays bookless and browserless after 9pm. It sits on the shelf like a very expensive alarm clock.

The reading pace has slowed to a more natural rate — about two books a month now. But the habit is sticky. The evening belongs to paper and Mochi curled up at the end of the sofa. I don't miss the scroll.