The first night, I was cooking dinner. Once I had everything going on the burners, I had a few minutes to kill. Normally I'd reach for my phone, but I couldn't. After a while, I got bored so I went ahead and did the dishes. Instead of leaving that chore for later and adding to my stress I got on top of it. Better, it required no willpower to do so since I was bored and literally had nothing better to do.
I've felt for years that the days were too short. It turns out they got shorter because of all of the accumulated minutes sucked into my phone. The days felt longer, more relaxed. It was easier to get the minutiae of life done during the between-times. I wasn't irritated by the kids interrupting me. I read more.
At the same time, I really missed the practical aspects of my phone. Listening to the radio while driving sucked. Not having navigation — I have essentially no sense of direction — was a nightmare.
I have a phone again now, but so far I haven't installed any of the consumptive apps on it. (For me that was mainly Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.) It's been good so far. I do find myself sometimes missing the ability to share things on those platforms. If there were write-only versions of those apps, I'd install them and then only consume on my laptop which is a little more naturally self-limiting by not being easily carried around.
A while back, I rewatched the original Alien. One thing that struck me, watching it with modern eyes how all of the characters constantly smoked. When the movie came out, that helped the characters look natural and believable. Now it just looks gross and distracting. I believe strongly in a few decades, we'll look back on phone use today in the same way.
At least, I hope we do. The scary alternative is an entire populace constantly drugged by our own dopamine receptors triggered by carefully engineered cognitive manipulation.