A device becomes controlling when every quiet moment automatically reaches for it.

The tell is not how long you use it but what happens in the gaps. The lift, the queue, the pause in conversation, the moment before sleep. When every empty second is automatically filled, the device is no longer a tool you pick up; it is where your hand goes.

Leave one gap unfilled each day on purpose. Wait in the queue without reaching. It will feel oddly long and it restores something: the ability to be unoccupied, which is where a fair amount of thinking used to happen.