You probably use your phone too much. I know I do. If I'm bored, I check Twitter (or X, if you're like that), check my WhatsApp messages, or scroll Instagram. Looking at my screentime is a scary thought, even though I do honestly try to consciously reduce it.
Somewhere, I had read that one of the reasons social media was so addictive was how colourful it was. The colours grab your attention, and the vibrant moving images keep hold of it. Bright red notification badges screaming for you to click on them. Now, I already use my phone in colourblind mode (on account of my colourblindness), but while exploring my phone's colour settings, I found an entirely 'Black and White' toggle. This immediately piqued my curiosity. What would happen if I drained my phone of colour? Not permanently of course, but just to see if what I thought was true. I discovered while googling this, that this idea was already backed by science. So, without further thought, I switched the setting on, and began my experiment.
The First Day
Funnily, one of the first things I noticed was how colourful the world became. I spent half an hour or so scrolling Twitter, and then looked up - in comparison to the dim, drained phone screen, the world was so colourful. This of course wasn't even the main intent of the experiment - but it was a pleasant and kind of heartwarming side effect that I noticed.
I did once have a bit of a silly moment - I was taking a photo of a flower while on a walk, and kept getting frustrated that it wasn't capturing the vibrancy, until about two seconds later when I realised it wasn't my camera, it was - obviously - my screen.
The Monochrome Effect
After the initial novelty, the real effects started to kick in. The biggest change was just how quickly I got bored of using my phone. The apps that are designed to keep you scrolling for as long as possible - they lost their magic powers. Instagram became a dull, unappealing wash of greys. Without the science-backed psychological pull of the bright colours, I found myself closing apps when I got bored, instead of scrolling for hours on end. Consequently, I checked my phone far less often. The urgent and manufactured dopamine hit just wasn't there anymore.
There was a physical benefit too. My eyes felt a lot less strained without the constant bright colours bombarding them throughout the day. The whole experience of my phone felt calmer and more transactional - I was using it to get something I wanted, not just because I was bored.
The core functions of the phone felt entirely unchanged - I did not miss the slight green hue of WhatsApp while I messaged my family, or the blue tint of Outlook when I checked my emails. The content was the same, and the phone felt more like a tool than a service.
But Was It Practical? No.
However, there were obvious drawbacks. My calendar is populated with various colours, all with meanings related to priority, timing, and various other properties of events that I can check at a glance. These were all picked and toned specifically so that I could tell the difference with my colourblindness - all this functionality was gone with the greyscale screen.
This does highlight however, what I believe is a key flaw in app design - a reliance on colour to convey information. I came across charts, graphs, and buttons that were completely indecipherable without colour cues. This taught me some unexpected lessons in design - if you app is unusable in black and white, I believe it is poorly designed.
Of course, there were some apps this couldn't be avoided in - photo editing was useless in black and white, and most videos became immensely boring. I did resort to temporarily flicking the colour back on, especially in times like those.
What I Learnt
I have, regrettably, since returned to using my phone in full colour. The experience nevertheless gave me a new awareness of how deliberately the digital world is designed to manipulate us. The psychology of colour in app design is a powerful and under-discussed force, and turning it off, even for a little while, felt like taking back a bit of my life.
While I'm no longer living in my monochrome world, I haven't abandonded it completely. I now have an accessibility shortcut set up, so I can tap an icon on my home screen to toggle greyscale on and off. I often switch it on in the evenings to help me before bed, or during the day when I am trying to work and want my phone to be as uninteresting as possible.
I would highly recommend trying this for yourself. It's minimal effort, easy to find on most phones, and shows surprisingly effective results. You might not stick with it forever, but for a week, or even just a day, draining the colour from your screen can show you, in glorious black and white, how much power those colours have over you.