Last night, after Maghrib, the southeaster was howling down from the mountains, rattling the windows in our little place here in Gordon’s Bay. I should’ve been soaking in that salty air, listening to the waves faintly crashing against the shore but instead, I caught myself scrolling. Notifications popping, thumb twitching. Phone addiction has a way of sneaking up on you.

It’s embarrassing, really. I left the city life, started homesteading, growing eggs, chasing kids around barefoot in the clay sand, all in search of something more grounded. And yet, here I am, a grown man, a father of six, still letting a glowing slab in my pocket steal hours from me.

Four hours and 37 minutes. Every. Single. Day.

That’s the stat I read on average, people spend over 4 hours daily glued to their screens. That’s 70 days a year. Imagine what I could do in 70 days on the farm build better chicken coops, finally fix that irrigation line, or even just sit with my kids under the guava tree teaching them Qur’an. Instead, those days get swallowed by swipes and taps.

And the health side? Blue light wrecking melatonin, messing with sleep. My own nights have been broken. I wake up groggy, grumpy, snapping at kids when it’s not even their fault. Islam teaches us: “Indeed, your body has a right over you” (Sahih Bukhari). Yet I treat mine like disposable hardware.

The hadith that hit me differently

I once read about a Sahabi who fell sick often, and someone questioned why. The Prophet ﷺ explained that sickness itself can be a form of purification. SubhanAllah, I thought of that after my own body recently forced me to slow down a boil, then the flu, after almost a year of being “healthy.” I realized: maybe my immune system needed the reminder. A reset.

And maybe, just maybe, our digital sickness is the same. This compulsion to check WhatsApp every 2 minutes, to drown in reels, to pretend productivity while secretly numbing ourselves. The more I think of it, the more I see phone addiction as a trial of our time.

Debugging code vs. debugging my phone habits

Here’s where my tech brain kicks in. I’ll happily debug a Laravel app at 2am with coffee in hand but debugging my own screen time? That’s the real nightmare.

Like:

• Blue light filter? Cool, but my thumb still finds its way to Twitter.
• 20-20-20 eye rule? Try explaining that to a toddler tugging at your pants while you’re mid-email.
• Notifications off? Great… except I’m the guy who checks anyway, “just in case.”

It’s funny, I can build automations that track sales across 200+ websites, but I can’t “automate” discipline. That has to come from the heart, from taqwa.

Islam already gave us the detox framework

I keep coming back to this ayah:

“And do not follow that of which you have no knowledge. Indeed, the hearing, the sight, and the heart—about all those [one] will be questioned.” (Surah Al-Isra, 17:36)

Every notification, every pointless scroll, is a fragment of my hearing, sight, and heart that I’ll answer for. That thought is heavier than any productivity hack.

So what do I do? I try little experiments:

• Leaving the phone on the solar shelf in the shed when we sit down for dinner.
• Charging it outside the bedroom (though Zainab laughs when I sneak back to “just check one thing”).
• Teaching the kids about “phone-free zones,” making it a family practice.

It’s imperfect. Some nights I fall flat. Other nights, we actually manage to talk, laugh, recite Qur’an together without that digital glow between us.

Maybe we need more “Cape Doctor” moments

That wild southeaster wind it’s harsh, relentless, but it clears the air. Maybe phone addiction needs the same. Harsh resets. Days where you lock it in a drawer and actually feel the itch of withdrawal. Nights where you swap doomscrolling for dhikr.

And I wonder if my kids see me hooked on a device, what does that teach them? If they see me putting it down, choosing them, choosing Allah, what does that plant in their hearts?

I don’t have a clean ending for this. I’m still figuring it out. But I know this much: the farm, the family, the faith they’re real. The phone? It’s just a tool. If I let it become my master, then I’ve already lost.

Ya Allah, help us use what’s in our hands for khayr, and not let it own us.