Three top tips to stop your phone addiction

Ever find yourself spending ages on your phone? You are not alone! Sixty-three-per-cent of those asked in our Teen Summit survey reported spending at least three hours on their phone in a typical day, with over a third of those surveyed spending five hours or more on their device.

If you're not sure exactly how long you're spending on your phone, then head into your settings – there will be an option to check out your daily usage. If your screen time surprises you, you might want to take control of how long you're spending on your device.

We've asked digital expert and author Dr Kaitlyn Regehr for her top tips to help you put down your phone and keep your screen time healthy. Watch the video below to see what she says and then scroll down for her top tips.

How to reduce the chances of becoming addicted to your phone

Using your phone can allow you to connect with friends, keep organised, take photos and get creative, amongst other things. But excessive usage can have negative effects on your wellbeing and mental health. If you want to see if you're getting close to being 'addicted' to your phone take our quiz. It'll also tell you your phone personality and some tailored advice on the best ways for someone like you to start to reduce screen time.

But first, lets look at Dr Kaitlyn's advice.

1. Turn your phone to greyscale

Dr Kaitlyn says that by turning your phone to greyscale mode, it will become less addictive. How to activate greyscale mode may vary from phone to phone.

You can enable greyscale on an iPhone by navigating to Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size and then select 'Colour Filters' and toggle it on. You can then set this up as a shortcut for the side button on your phone by navigating to Settings > Accessibility > Accessibility Shortcut and setting this for Colour Filters. This will allow you to easily switch between grey and colour by tapping the button on the side of your iPhone 3 times.

To activate greyscale mode on an Android phone, navigate to Settings > Accessibility > Visibility Enhancements (or Vision Enhancements) > Colour Correction and select Greyscale.

2. Do a digital spring clean

Decluttering your phone has many benefits, not only will deleting unused or unwanted apps free up valuable space to store more photos and videos of your precious memories, but it can also help extend battery life and enhance security. Dr Kaitlyn says that if you decide to keep your social media apps, then you could go on an unfollowing spree. This means unfollowing pages that don't make you feel good or don't empower you. Removing this negativity from your life can help improve your mental wellbeing.

3. Game your algorithm

Social media algorithms help decide what you see on your feeds, but did you know you can change the kind of content that your algorithm serves up? Dr Kaitlyn recommends actively searching for things you want to see, and quickly moving past things that you don't want to see, she calls this 'gaming the algorithm'. Give it a go and see how quickly you can make your feed change to display more positive content.

We've teamed up with BBC Radio 5 Live for Teen Summit to find out what more than 2000 teenagers aged 13 to 18 thought about the world around them. You can find out more about what they thought on our Teen Summit survey results page.

If you need support

You should always tell someone about the things you’re worried about. You can tell a friend, parent, guardian, teacher, or another trusted adult. If you're struggling with your mental health, going to your GP can be a good place to start to find help. Your GP can let you know what support is available to you, suggest different types of treatment and offer regular check-ups to see how you’re doing.

If you’re in need of in-the-moment support you can contact Childline, where you can speak to a counsellor. Their lines are open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

There are more links to helpful organisations on the BBC Bitesize Action Line page for young people.