My Spouse Is Always on His Smartphone. What Can I Do?

A December 2024 survey for South Bend, Indiana-based Harmony Healthcare IT had similar results, but the boomers who responded clocked nearly an hour more screen time. It did not question adults older than 78.

4 steps to reduce screen time

What can you do? Short of yanking the phone away from your partner with a crowbar, I recommend giving these less dramatic steps a try.

1. Show your partner how much time he’s spending on the phone. I’m no psychologist or marriage counselor, but cold hard statistics could be eye-opening.

He and you may be shocked at how those many hours add up. If your hubby has an iPhone, urge him look at Screen Time, listed under ⚙️ Settings.

If he’s on Android, make him look at the rough equivalent, Digital Wellbeing & Parental Controls, also found in ⚙️ Settings. He’ll see not just the total amount of time he’s spent on the device but also the activities and apps he’s using most, as well as how often he’s picked up the handset.

With any luck, the knowledge will set him on a path to cut back.

2. Set stringent ground rules. No excuses. Tell him to put the phone away certain times of the day, be it at dinner, before going to sleep, and when he otherwise should be paying attention to you guys.

Such ground rules should apply to everyone in your household. If possible, don’t let your husband bring the phone into the kitchen, bedroom or other rooms deemed off limits at designated times.

I recognize the problem with such absolutes, especially if your phone has turned into your alarm clock. But any exceptions should be carved out only for extraordinary circumstances: critical work, project deadlines or because a loved one is undergoing a medical procedure.

3. Have a heart-to-heart talk. Is the reason he’s on the phone so much because he’s distracted or, worse, doesn’t want to converse with you? Australians even coined a word for it: phubbing, short for phone snubbing.

It’s sad when your spouse has a closer relationship with his phone than he does with you. At the very least, tell him the practice is disrespectful, rude and hurtful. And if larger issues are at play, talk it out and possibly seek couples therapy.

4. Reduce interruptions. The device you’re trying to get your husband to avoid can theoretically help him spend less time with it.

As part of Screen Time and Digital Wellbeing settings, you or he can apply tools that kick in at appropriate moments.

iPhones let you choose among custom Focus modes: Do Not Disturb, Driving and Sleep among them, each designed to minimize distractions. You can access these and other Focus modes in ⚙️ Settings or by swiping down from the top right side of the screen to surface Control Center.

Selecting Reduce Interruptions limits distractions by creating less busy custom lock screens or home screens. You also can choose to permit only notifications from select people and apps at given times, though you can enable a setting to let Apple “intelligently” determine important notifications allowed to break through.

On an Android device such as a Google Pixel, enabling Bedtime Mode silences the phone, dims the wallpaper and changes the display to black and white. You get to tell the phone which people and apps can interrupt you with a message or phone call when you’re winding down or actually asleep.

Don’t worry if you set things up so no one can get in touch overnight. Come morning, alarms will sound to wake you all up. Just don’t keep snoozing.

If your husband follows the steps above, I hope that he and the rest of the family will find a balance. For extra validation or goal setting, he can revisit those stats in Screen Time or Digital Wellbeing and cheer a meaningful increase in time away from his phone.

Bonus tip: Take screenshots to plan a getaway

As you research plans for your summer vacation or other upcoming travels, you may be taking screenshots on your phone of lodging sites, blogs, social media outlets and news articles. Such shots may be spread out in your camera roll and not easy to find or organize.

A new screenshot list feature added to Google Maps works in conjunction with Google’s Gemini AI to identify places referenced in those screenshots, which you then can add to a shareable list. Google has just begun rolling out the feature to iOS users, with Android to follow.