Who made this.
This project is the work of Owen Hill. Owen is a clinical mental health counselor who works mostly with college students. He’s also a Mainer, a Millennial, and a guy with a phone problem.
Phone Bad///Life Good came out of his many years attempting to reduce his own screen time and support his clients in their attempts to do the same. Since implementing this plan in the fall of 2025 his own screen time has remained steady at about 90 minutes a day. This is less than half as much as his average from the year before, and less than 20% of his average during his worst period of problem phone use way back in 2021. It’s the one intervention he’s found to be both effective and sticky after several years of aggressive experimentation.
Owen is available for speaking engagements, 1:1 consultations with other mental health professionals about problematic phone use, and to be excited about something at you (although fair warning he gets to pick the topic on this last one). He is sometimes available for 1:1 coaching for individuals who want additional support making Phone Bad///Life Good.
He’d love to hear from you at owen@phonebadlifegood.com.
Phone Bad///Life Good is a personal project by Owen Hill. It’s informed by Owen’s clinical training and professional experience, but it is not a clinical service, a therapy program, or medical advice, and taking the screener or reading the plan does not create a clinical relationship of any kind. The screener is a self-reflection tool, not a diagnostic instrument — it hasn’t been validated by a randomized control trial and it won’t tell you whether you meet criteria for any disorder. If your phone use is tangled up with sleep, mood, school, work, or relationships in ways a 30-minute plan won’t touch, please talk to someone you trust or a mental health professional — ideally both. If you’re in crisis, reach out to a crisis line or go to your nearest emergency room.