Don’t spend your money on another gadget to solve your dopamine addiction. Try dumbing down your smartphone first.

In a world where people are constantly bombarded with stimuli from screens, Gen Z seems to be craving a simpler, stress-free life. To help, they have turned to dumb phones. Since 2021, the sales of dumb phones, devices without access to the internet, social media, and most apps, have been on the rise, particularly among young adults and college students, according to a study by Partners Universal Innovation Research.

But the dumb phone is just another thing to buy. Weaning yourself off of dopamine is a slow and steady process. Taking the drastic measure of buying a dumb phone can be expensive. For students who already have a working phone, it is wiser to save the precious few dollars you have. You can get almost the same benefits of a dumb phone on your own.

This means removing everything that isn’t absolutely necessary such as apps, notifications, and added stimuli. The idea is to remove distractions but retain the smartphone features necessary to your lifestyle. What is necessary is up to you, and that is the best part.

Here are some ways to do it.

Delete as many apps as possible. This is by far the easiest way to dumb down your smartphone. Think of the top five most important apps that add significant benefits to your daily life and remove the rest. Apps to keep could include camera, messages, calendar, and music. Be wary of other notification based apps such as email. Know yourself and your phone tendencies and delete accordingly.

Turn on grayscale. Grayscale makes your phone much less visually appealing. Taking away the bright colors of your home screen and replacing it with boring, monochromatic ones significantly lowers your screen time according to a study by ScienceDirect.

Set app limits that actually work. This can look like buying a device such as Brick, which blocks the apps of your choosing until you touch your phone to the small, silicon block. At $59, Brick is a fraction of the price of most dumb phones and provides nearly the same benefits. Leave Brick in your dorm, and you won’t be able to access those apps until you come back. You can also use other apps like One Sec or Stay Free which are designed to limit screen time more effectively than Apple’s Screen Time app.

By dumbing down your smartphone rather than ditching it, you keep your high-quality camera. Dumb phones generally have severely underperforming cameras. Their grainy photos don’t hold a candle to the high resolution, multi-lens camera attached to your smartphone. They also aren’t able to video call. Moms across the country will revolt if they can no longer see your face on a weekly basis.

It is also much less expensive to stick with the device you already have. Dumb phones can cost upwards of $300 if you want any of the features that make them worthwhile. The Light Phone III, a simple phone about the size of a sticky note, features maps, Bluetooth, and a music player. But it comes with a price tag of $700. Brands with similar features, such as Punkt, Mudita Kompakt, and Sunbeam, are only slightly less pricey. Most college students can’t drop that just to help them limit their screen time.

One downside of simplifying your phone is that you can easily return to old distractions. Any actual change requires self-control, which is, of course, quite hard. But this is a good thing. The growth in self that comes from actively choosing to not be distracted is more beneficial to your overall character development than an immediate change. Find a group of friends to keep you accountable. Practice all the classic tricks like leaving your phone in a drawer or out of sight.

Dumbing down your phone isn’t a perfect solution to a problem that involves discipline and personal virtue. But neither will a new device fix your old habits.

Implement these fixes to enjoy your spring break in the best way possible: unfettered from your smartphone and unworried about your screen time report.