For the longest time, I resented my dad because of the way he wielded his control over my access to technology. The wifi router? Timed so I couldn’t go online after 11 p.m. Instagram? Shackled by iPhone screen time controls so that I could only spend 15 minutes a day on the app. Say nothing of Snapchat or Tiktok, both of which I had five-minute limits for. I felt constantly stifled, and consistently out-of-the-loop on most major social media platforms.

Thankfully, however, just a few months ago, he relented, after I spent copious dinner times grinding him down: I won’t develop personal self-control if you never give me the chance to, I pleaded. Just let me be independent, for once. And so, at the beginning of 2022, my great social experiment started, in the form of unrestricted access to any technological drug I may choose.

Initially, I was gleeful. Finally, I could text whoever I wanted, whenever I wanted. And certainly, it was a freer existence, if a much less productive one. If I so desired to binge all 24 episodes of a ’90s TV show at 4 a.m., there wasn’t any screen time limit to stop me. 

Still, at times I’ve had to pause and reflect on the real ramifications that unrestricted screen time has had. Just recently, one number, 4:31, stopped me in my tracks. Because that was how long I was spending on my phone each day on average, compared to the hour or so I’d managed to rack up back when every app had a time limit. Four and a half hours is just too much wasted time.

While in theory this three-hour increase might not seem that heinous, I cannot help but feel a needling unease creep up every time I look at my screen-time tracker. As I scroll mindlessly through Instagram, there’s always a little voice at the back of my brain, one that sounds suspiciously like my dad, urging me to stop and get to work.

After all, there’s lots of things I could be doing if I wasn’t devoting four and a half hours in the day to the worship of my phone, refreshing my Twitter feed, or watching Instagram stories. I could pick up a new hobby—maybe start training for a marathon, or finally get around to finishing the novel that’s been rotting away in my Google Drive for the last six months. I could learn how to knit. I could pick up competitive rollerblading. If I was smart with it, I might even be able to start sleeping the recommended eight hours each night.

Despite it all, however, it feels almost impossible to actually put my phone down. Without a parent-controlled screen time limit on my phone, I often find myself caving to procrastination, lured into the depths of endless videos and celebrity drama. I’ve found myself sleeping later and later, forced to finish assignments because I’d wasted hours earlier in the day texting my friends or watching videos of cats.

I don’t want to say that teenagers have no self-control, but as a teenager who knows other teenagers, it’s not a stretch to say that we’re lacking in that department. Our inability to act in a way that benefits our future selves exists for biological and societal reasons—not only is our prefrontal cortex not fully developed until we’re 25, social media is literally designed to hook as many people as possible. 

Which is all to say that in my own experience at least, I guess my dad was right, though I’ll never admit it to his face. My quality of work, or at least how long I spent working, was a lot better back when I didn’t control my own access to social media apps that are designed to be as addictive as possible. While I still don’t agree with how tightly the leash he held over my technology usage was, I do understand now why he was so worried in the first place. 

For better or for worse, I think it’s good that I’ve learned this on my own. While I might have lost a month’s time to the salacious seven-second videos, being the one to exert control over my social media consumption has helped me learn that self-control is a true skill–one that I haven’t quite mastered. 

Still, I’m proud to say that as of this week, I’m TikTok free. All it took for me to get there was an overdose of six hours every day for two weeks straight. See dad? I’m learning. Thanks for giving me the chance to.