BRENTWOOD, TN — Derek Hollis, 38, announced Sunday evening that he had enabled grayscale display mode on his iPhone in a bold effort to reduce compulsive scrolling, then spent the remainder of the evening demonstrating the grayscale setting to nine separate people, including a stranger at Walgreens.

Hollis, a project manager and self-described “digital minimalist in progress,” said he had read about the technique in a wellness newsletter he receives but has never unsubscribed from. The idea, he explained to each person individually, is that removing color makes the phone less dopamine-triggering and therefore less appealing. He demonstrated this by unlocking his phone repeatedly to show people how unappealing it was.

“It genuinely works,” Hollis told his wife, Carrie, 36, while showing her his phone at 11:14 p.m. “I’ve barely looked at it all night.”

“He showed me the gray phone four times,” Carrie Hollis confirmed. “Each time was to explain that he was looking at it less.”

Hollis also posted about the grayscale experiment on Instagram, where the screenshot of his gray home screen received 34 likes. He checked the likes in color after temporarily disabling the setting to verify the screenshot looked correct before posting.

A follow-up wellness newsletter, which arrived Monday, recommended also turning off notifications. Hollis has not yet opened it.

At press time, Hollis had re-enabled color mode “just for the week,” citing an upcoming work presentation he needed to review on his phone, and had already forgotten he owned a phone.