Screen Time & Stolen Focus: The Apps That Made the Cut

Disclaimer

I’ll be candid, I have worked on apps for 13 years or so and because of that, I had felt guilty about contributing to the sociectal problem of smartphone addiction. Taking into account that the average UK adult spends 3 hours and 21 minutes per day on their smartphones (according to The IPA TouchPoints 2025 Report and the Ofcom “Online Nation” 2025 Report), we’re all, or at least know of someone who spends more time than they should tapping their screen. However, I believe that we all have a responsibility to become aware of this and take the steps needed to become more “connected” to the “real world” and disconnect from our smartphones.

UK Smartphone Usage by Demographic (2025/26)

Source: Derived from IPA TouchPoints and Ofcom “Online Nation” datasets.

I’ve been reading Stolen Focus by Johann Hari, well worth a read if you’re concerned about how often you use your smartphone. It goes into depth about the tactics used by Silicon Valley and the author shares their experience of “going dark” from their phone. As well as tips from insiders, that once you’ve seen them, you’ll ask yourself “why didn’t I think of that?”.

Whilst it’s a continuing battle trying to reclaim my focus, these are the apps that enrich my life…for now and I’ll continue to be mindful of their effects.

Kicking back

Duolingo - I think everyone knows at least a little something about Duolingo. Learning languages is a great way to “waste time”. They’ve also recently introduced Music lessons and Chess lessons.

Flashscore - Tracking football teams, fixtures, lineups etc… As well as keeping track of the Scotland national team as they head to World Cup 2026. As well as football, there are too many other sports to list, but I like to keep an eye on International Rugby Union, Snooker and Darts.

Guardian - For the headlines and the puzzles.

Media

BBC iPlayer - Fairly self-explanatory. Over the years the app has improved massively and there’s a huge back catalogue of classic BBC programmes. I tend to stick to Still Game, Limmy’s Show, Scot Squad and Burnistoun. There’s some Hollywood movies on there too. All for free (if you’re a TV license payer).

BBC Sounds - Live Radio and Podcasts from BBC. I’m fairly stuck on BBC Scotland alone.

Deezer - I’ve been moving around music streaming services for a long time, Spotify, Amazon Music and most recently, Deezer. I like to give them a try, see how well their algorithms know my likes and stop me skipping. Right now Deezer isn’t doing great at that, might be time for a shuffle.

Pocket Casts - A podcast aggregator. Way too many podcast subscriptions to list. I’ve had it since it launched, so I can’t comment on the free teir they offer now, but it’s a solid choice if you’re into podcasts.

VLC - Handles almost any media type you ask it to. Works well in conjunction with Internet Archive; which contains an enormous amount of archived websites, texts, video, audio, software and images.

YouTube - The grandaddy of social media video sites. I’ve yet to find a topic that doesn’t have SOME kind of video about it, but a lot of content these days seems to be AI generated, and it keeps being churned out. Still, I spend most of my time on my phone watching something, either philosophy, psychology, stand up and the occasional tune. Also, see NewPipe.

Social Media

LinkedIn - Right now, I think this is the only social media I use. It’s a “Professional” social network for professionals to connect, exchange industry news, share business achievements or for finding work. They also have great puzzles.

Utilities

DuckDuckGo - A privacy-first focused browser. Adblocker built in. Uses DuckDuckGo’s own search engine that doesn’t store your data. Refcently introduced an AI assistant that also doesn’t store your data. It’s an all-rounder if you’re privacy concious.

Gmail - Enough said.

Google Drive - Not an awful lot to say about it, but I’ve found it by far the easiest to use for cloud storage. It’s likely because I’m in the Google ecosystem. An Apple fan would say the same about iCloud.

Google Gemini - “Gemini is a generative artificial intelligence-powered chatbot and virtual assistant developed by Google” - I find it useful to ask questions about coding, proof-reading, finding new music based upon what I like to listen to.

NordVPN - Everyone should have a VPN.

Sleep - In my opinion, by far the number one Alarm app. There’s a plethora of options to set alarms, how you silence them (think, scanning a QR code or NFC tag in another room, no snooze for you), sleep tracking, white noise, the list goes on. I highly recommend it.