You picked up your phone to check the weather. Twenty minutes later, you’re watching a stranger organize their pantry, and you have no idea how you got here.

You lock the screen, set it down, and feel…nothing. Not entertained. Not informed. Just vaguely emptier than before.

You used to read books. You used to finish movies without reaching for your pocket. You used to sit with your own thoughts and not feel restless.

Now you can’t make it through a paragraph without the urge to check something. Not because you’re lazy or broken—because everything on your phone is designed to interrupt you.

We are reclaiming our attention.

We live in an era of miraculous technology, yet we have never felt more scattered.

We all joke about having ADHD and laugh it off when we check our phones in the middle of a movie or a deep conversation. But the data suggests there’s nothing funny about what’s happening.

Studies show that the average person can now focus on a single screen for just 47 seconds before switching tasks. We are fracturing our attention spans nearly 186 times a day, according to a 2025 report by Reviews.org (Asurion puts the number at 352 times for heavy phone users). Simply put, we have trained our brains to reject deep thought in favor of the next notification.

Recommended reading: Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity

This isn’t a personal failure. It is a design feature of the apps we use.

Enter Safe Mode is a project dedicated to finding a better way to live with technology.

We don’t want to smash our smartphones or retreat to a cabin in the woods. We love the future. But we believe that to enjoy it, we need to build better boundaries. We need protocols that allow us to use technology with intention, rather than letting it use us.

Our Core Beliefs

1. The Power of Singular Purpose. The modern smartphone tries to be everything: camera, stereo, map, bank, and casino—and ends up doing none of them peacefully. We champion devices that do one thing perfectly. When you use a dedicated camera, you aren’t interrupted by a work email. When you listen to an MP3 player, you aren’t tempted to scroll.
2. Friction Is a Feature. Convenience is often the enemy of memory. If a vintage camera takes four seconds to charge its flash, that’s four seconds you spend looking at your friends, not a screen. That tiny bit of “slowness” forces you to be present; a bell of mindfulness
3. Connection, Not Addiction. We believe in using tools that serve us, then getting out of the way. We prefer offline workflows and physical media not because we are stuck in the past, but because they protect our focus in the present.

Who This Is For

This is for the creative who feels burnt out, the parent worried about screen time, and anyone who feels like they are losing the ability to sit quietly with their own thoughts. Heck, maybe I just don’t want to feel so alone in a rapidly changing world. There are plenty of other sites that dive headfirst into specs and tech; that’s not us. The goal here is to find neat things that can make life a little better.

Who Runs Enter Safe Mode?

Why, hello, didn’t see you there. My name is Drew, just a regular dad working in marketing, trying to figure out how to create cool things in a world designed to distract me. I built this portal to document the tools that help me slow down. Maybe they will help you, too.

Enter Safe Mode is here to help you disconnect with intention, so you can reconnect with the things that really matter.