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Nearly everyone has experienced the diminishing returns of the endless scroll: refreshing social media, swiping on a dating app, or getting stuck down a Wikipedia rabbit hole.
But there’s a way to game your phone usage to get out of this cycle, experts say.
The trick is to divide your cell phone use into one “kale phone” loaded with only focus-enhancing, serotonin-boosting core utilities and a separate “cocaine phone” loaded with the full dopamine rush of your favorite online distractions.
Cycling between the two phones “resets your baseline,” according to social media marketing manager George Mack, who first proposed the system.
Here’s Mack’s ‘Cocaine-Kale Protocol’:
Nearly everyone has experienced the diminishing returns of the endless scroll: refreshing social media, swiping on a dating app, or getting stuck down a Wikipedia rabbit hole
“Your Cocaine Phone feels too intense after 60 minutes a day,” Mack described his experience. “You’re starting to crave the Kale phone.”
The “kale phone” only has its Kindle app for reading books, a Notes app, and smartphone travel essentials like Uber and Maps. The line itself is for emergencies only, so only a few close contacts even have access to the number.
The ‘cocaine phone’ has everything your heart desires, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp and everyone you know has the number.
Mack, chief innovation officer and founder of digital marketing company Multiply, is no stranger to the attention-grabbing power of 24/7 access to social media. Using all that attention for his customers is literally his profession.
“I get countless DMs from people saying this has fixed their smartphone addiction,” Mack wrote in a Twitter post praise the method.
Mack describes it as the little-chosen third way among equally costly solutions to suffering as a “phone addict” or a “phoneless luddite.”
“Either you run out or you miss,” Mack said.
Practitioners can adapt the technique to their own lifestyles, but Mack limits his “cocaine phone” use to only after noon on weekdays and after about 2 p.m. on weekends, so his mornings are productive while he’s still fresh.
“I get 90 percent of the benefits of having a phone,” Mack said, “without the addiction.”
“If I want to put it off, I have to read a book or get ideas in my notes. (Win win).’
As far as there’s any neuroscience in this method, it all comes down to weaning off the dopamine hits that come from constantly refreshing your feeds, and boosting your serotonin production in your brain’s neural pathways.
Dopamine has been described as the ‘feel good neurotransmittersr’ by former Harvard Women’s Health Watch editor-in-chief Stephanie Watson.
The pleasurable chemical is naturally produced by the brain as a reinforcement mechanism, part of the brain’s reward system.
The problem, of course, is that things like social media use, sugary and fatty foods, and even hard drugs like heroin or cocaine can lead to the production of powerful hits of dopamine — rewarding the brain for creating bad habits.
Serotonin, on the other hand, the brain chemical associated with happiness, focus, and calmness, is often triggered by exercise, as in the “runner’s high,” or exposure to sunlight, as Watson explains on the Harvard Medical School website.
Some studies have shown that extended reading in long form And to write may positively affect the brain’s serotonin production, suggesting that this is part of the benefit of using the “kale phone.”
At least the system seems to work for Mack.
“I still get the optionality that smartphones and social media produce,” he said of his kale and cocaine phone split. “But I don’t consume it 24/7 until my brain melts.”