I read the first page of hacker news twice a day. Once in the morning, and once at night. Usually nothing comes of it, but sometimes some new tech shows up with immediate application for one of my clients. Or someone posts something really insightful that makes me think.
If I want to play a game on my phone for 15 minutes? Fallen London. Great writing, tons of content.
I (strictly) have no social media apps on my phone. My rule is to decide how to spend time, then do it – never ever just do things to ‘kill time’ (it is, after all, time that kills us).
If I don’t know what to do, I study. I pick a subject and try to learn it to an ‘average’ level of competence. I typically do this ~2 hours a day, and it’s been my conscious habit for approximately 25 years so far. This is hard, but possible to do on a phone. Sometimes I’ll do research on a phone, and save the links to read properly on a laptop later. If I scroll on a phone, it is an act of hunger and hope.
People sometimes tell me to ‘live a little’. I don’t think they know the difference between living and dying. Every day, I become more. My neighbors spend their days at home drinking and eating – every day, they become less.