'It's an illness': China sees boom in businesses offering to end smartphone addiction

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On Douban, a Chinese social networking website, there is a group named "Away from the screen," which was formed in 2020 and now has over 30,000 members who are striving to break their phone addiction.

A person, with the username "Bot9," shared a screenshot March 8, indicating that he had spent roughly 11 hours a day on his mobile phone the previous week.

"It's already an illness," he wrote. "I'm going to try to cut back on my mobile phone use starting tomorrow."

However, on March 9 and 10, within two days after his original post, he revealed that his phone use time had increased to about 12 hours per day.

As more people have become concerned about spending too much time on mobile phones and are struggling to break the habit ― businesses offering to help users overcome phone addiction are thriving.

"The market has great prospects for growth because numerous apps make it difficult for people to put down their phones once they pick them up," said Liu Yang, 36, owner of Shiguang Box, which sells "phone isolation boxes" that it says help people reduce screen time.

It requires four simple steps to separate the phone from its owner; open the box, place the phone inside, close it, and set a lock timer. The phone can only be accessed once the timer ends.

According to Liu, he receives up to 800 enquiries about the box every day, and sells up to 2,000 different types of boxes each month on Taobao, an online shopping platform owned by Alibaba Group which owns the South China Morning Post.

While most his customers are students preparing for college or graduate school admission exams, some are in their 30s, 40s, and even older, said Liu.

"A customer thanked me afterwards because she said she could sleep longer and better after using the box," Liu said.

Some people even order self-designed boxes with motivating words printed on them, he said.

Phone junkies, in addition to using phone isolation boxes, use various other tactics to limit the amount of time they spend browsing on their phones.

One strategy is to refrain from using smartphones entirely.

After system updates failed to keep up with the trend, BlackBerry and other older model phones, which have limited access to modern apps, have found a new market among mobile phone addicts.

Bi Andi, 29, bought a BlackBerry 9000, which was first manufactured in 2008, for less than 400 yuan ($63) as a replacement for her iPhone 4S in 2015, when she was preparing for the Chinese graduate school entrance examination.

"I spent 800 yuan ($127) ― roughly three-quarters of my monthly living expenses ― to rent a spot at a self-study room; I didn't want to squander any time on my phone," Bi said.

However, because smartphones are so widely used in mainland China, it is impossible for most people to give them up altogether.

"The traditional way doesn't work for me to break my phone addiction because I need to use several applications for work and daily life, such as food delivery apps and media apps," Bi explained. "The strategy of ditching smartphones is more common among students."

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