Help! Massive technophobe needs help to buy a phone that he won’t melt his head with!

Hey sorry nobody got back to you on this.

If you are willing to make the jump over to Android then there is a very simple app that does what you are looking for. It's called Funamo and it's awesome. You can set hard limits in it on how long you can use different apps and once you hit that limit the app is dead for the rest of the day without a way around it. On top of that it has the ability to do web filtering based on a white list. In other words you can only access websites you tell the app are okay. You can also block access to any apps on your phone that you deem need to be behind a password.

My personal setup, I am using white listing with a total of about six websites available to me, of which I only use one currently. I block access to Chrome, YouTube, the play store, and a couple other apps. All of these restrictions can be by passed by having my wife log into Funamo and give me one time access to which ever app. I love it and it's the only reason why I have a smart phone today.

 

Hey I got an old iPad this last week and had to deal with this same issue. My solution was to turn on the restrictions settings in settings. In the restrictions area you can set different things like the app ratings you can install. The most important setting though for me comes under the website restriction settings. In here you can choose to only allow your device to access websites you list. This is then applied across the entire iPad. It's awesome.

 

The easy way out is to implement parental controls and have someone else hold the password. You are only allowed one hour internet per day. I have not checked, but I believe should be possible to implement that on the iPhone: Settings -> General -> Screen time

The proper way out is to take a mini-sabbatical: change your environment entirely for two weeks, but leave the phone behind for this time. Get a hotel/motel room somewhere far, next to a forest, get a few books (not too many, decision block will set in) and think about all your past misfortunes and pains over cups of tea. For safety, dial in every day for 10 minutes to your loved ones.

It's not the phone that's the problem, but that your subconscious mind (the observer) didn't have time to catch up with reality, your conscious mind. So there's a lot of dissonance between what's real and your perceived reality.

I'm on a month-long mini-sabbatical ordered by the doctor (burnout/boreout and severe depression), and it seemed to have work for me quite well; I have one more week to go. Already decided I will quit my current job once my medical sabbatical ends.

 

I'm exactly in the same situation as you, although I own an android, in which you can easily uninstall all apps (even the stock ones) so i did it, I uninstalled all apps(even app installer), chrome, anything that would lead to me watching any kind of explicit content, the day after i did this i realised how much I am addicted to phone, I used to pick up my phone every 5 minutes even though i knew there's no use for it. I'm glad i did it although it has rendered my phone useless with only few apps like calculator, clock, etc. Now i'm having real transformation, I'm having a bad dream every single night, earlier I felt sad and took some help of internet to ease myself. But now i have to face myself, i've replaced all my sexual thoughts that lead to nightfall with all that i study during daytime, it's hard to practise, i still can't do it completely. I'm hoping that this will lead to a real transformation. And this time i can definitely say that i'm on the right path. I don't know about iOS but hope you find something like this, it definitely helps.