What Happened When a Digital Wellness Coach Tried Mobile Gaming

Image by DrMedYourRasenn from Pixabay

It seemed innocent enough.

The baby was asleep. I was home alone, waiting for my partner to get back from a performance. I’d read as much as I wanted for the evening and needed something to pass the last hour.

Then I saw an ad for Disney Solitaire in a cash-back app I was checking.

This wasn’t my first rodeo with mobile games. I’d crushed candy, sorted animals, moved blocks. You name it. But as a digital minimalist, I knew these apps stole time and pulled away my attention from what actually mattered. So I quit them all.

Now I was curious: Would mobile games still hook me the same way? As a digital wellness coach, I wanted to understand what my clients are up against. I forgot how tech addiction feels and wanted to see how some of my strategies measured up against mobile games, arguably one of the most addictive kind of apps.

I’d download it for the weekend, starting on Thursday evening, get back in that headspace, then delete it Monday morning. Simple experiment.

The results were worse than I thought.

Seeing the app when I closed my eyes at night and getting that familiar fuzzy brain feeling was like getting back with a toxic boyfriend your family hates. You know they’re bad news but you just can’t get enough of them.

Even when I put my phone down the second someone spoke to me, half my brain was still in the game. Counting cards. Craving points. Wondering how close I was to unlocking the next scene. It stole my presence from the people and things that matter most to me.

And that was just one weekend.

The “Harmless” Experiment

The plan was always to delete the app.

I downloaded Disney Solitaire for a few reasons:

• I’m a mom now and wanted to see what my child is up against

• I want to understand what my clients are up against better

• I’m the kind of person who enjoys running tests on themselves

Research shows the biggest predictor of a child’s digital habits is their parents’ digital habits. If I was going to model healthy technology use for my kid, I needed to know what these apps actually do to developing brains. And to be honest, after years of practicing digital minimalism, I’d forgotten how powerful they really are.

So I decided to run an experiment. Download a game for the weekend. Experience it fresh through the eyes of a parent. Understand what my clients — and eventually my child — would be facing. Then delete it Monday morning.

I thought my years of practice would protect me. I thought understanding the manipulation tactics would be enough. I thought I could observe the addiction from a safe distance, like a researcher studying a virus through glass.

I was wrong.

By Sunday, I knew I needed to delete it. The problem? I didn’t want to.

What Happened Over One Weekend

The first night, I already knew I was in deep. I could name every manipulation tactic they were using on me. It didn’t matter. I was still hooked.

When my husband got home, I’d played for over an hour. It felt like 10 minutes. Putting my phone down to ask my husband how his show went felt tedious. I itched to keep playing.

By the next day, I felt like an addict trying to hide my stash. My phone became an extension of my arm and the thought of leaving it at home felt catastrophic.

My husband couldn’t believe his eyes when he caught me playing every chance I could: in the car, while the baby slept, during lunch.

Inside the app, time slipped through my fingers like smoke. Outside the app, time crawled. I’d run out of coins and have to wait for the hourly boost, checking every few minutes. Weirdly, I thought I was having fun while playing, but afterwards I felt…hollow. Dissatisfied. Empty.

By Sunday, the levels were harder. Each one took more coins and gave less rewards. I needed more completed levels to unlock the next scene. I was ready to break up.

Monday morning, I planned to finish the last two levels of the Moana scene and delete the app.

But Disney Solitaire saw it coming. They weren’t ready to hear me say, “it’s not you, it’s me.” That’s when they introduced a new power up: 4x rewards for every completed level.

Suddenly I was flush with coins again. Each level gave me momentum toward mini challenges faster, which meant more coins and longer play sessions. They’d engineered the exact moment when I was about to quit and gave me just enough to keep me playing.

It took until Tuesday morning before I finally pulled the trigger and deleted the app along with all of its data.

Why Mobile Games Override Everything

Mobile games don’t target your logical mind. They go straight for your caveman brain.

Saturated colors. Dynamic sounds. Flashy movements. The way cards spring and twirl when you tap them. Even my cat was mesmerized watching me play.

But the rewards are where they really get you.

Like slot machines, mobile games combine simple gameplay with seemingly random payoffs. One level feels impossible. The next is a breeze. You never know what to expect, so you keep playing to find out.

But don’t be fooled. None of it is random.

Tech companies know that unpredictable rewards are more motivating than consistent ones. The difficulty isn’t increasing chronologically. You’re on a manufactured roller coaster, engineered to keep you chasing the next high.

Tactics they use:

• making you pay to start each level

• resetting your streak if you quit before completing a level

• social comparison (leader boards and Tinkerbell mean mugs you if you quit)

Here’s what unsettled me most: If this game had me by the brain as a digital wellness coach in my 30s, what would it do to a child?

I can recognize the tricks. I can do the math and know quitting a level is less costly than buying power-ups. I can see through the artificial stakes.

But if I was ten years old, there’s no way I’d ever put this game down.

Why Moderation Doesn’t Always Work

People love to talk about moderation and setting limits with digital habits. Screen time limits. Scheduled breaks. Just twenty minutes a day.

I’m all for moderation with most things. But with addictive technologies like mobile games? I’m not convinced it's enough.

You can set screen limits with your kids, but what do they do when they’re not playing? They talk endlessly about it. They beg for five more minutes. They ask if you’ll make an exception when friends come over.

That’s exactly what I was doing to myself.

Video game addiction more closely resembles heroin addiction than a chocolate craving. Just because it’s common doesn’t mean it’s harmless.

And I went into this with safeguards. My phone stays on grayscale (the bright colors didn’t affect me), my volume was turned off, and I made deliberate effort to stay present with my husband. Yet, my nose was still buried in the app.

The game didn’t need my time to control me. It just needed space in my head.

What It Actually Cost Me

The darkest moment of the weekend came at my mom’s birthday celebration.

I was surrounded by the people I care about most in the world. And all of it felt dull. Meaningless. Like I was going through the motions while Disney Solitaire burned a hole in my pocket.

That might sound like an exaggeration, but it’s not.

The game had convinced my brain that completing the next level mattered more than being present with my loved ones. More than real conversations with real people.

And for what?

No one cares that I completed the “Tale as Old as Time” scene from Beauty and the Beast. I can’t put it on my resume. It’s not something I created or built or contributed to the world.

One weekend didn’t ruin my life. But one weekend turns into weeks. Weeks turn into years. It’s not hard to look up and realize another year has passed without accomplishing the goals you actually care about.

Over decades, that adds up to a lot of anxiety and hopelessness about time you can never get back.

What This Means for You

Willpower alone isn’t enough to get out of the mobile gaming (or social media) matrix.

I’m a digital wellness coach. This is literally my job. I had six years of practice, grayscale mode, professional expertise, and full awareness of the tactics that would be used against me.

And yet… it still deeply affected me.

Remember: The problem isn’t you. But there is something you can do about it.

I couldn’t effectively moderate my mobile gaming habit with all my preparation, so there comes a point where it makes more sense not to use them at all. But you get to choose where that line is. For me, that line was crossed.

If you’re struggling with a digital habit that won’t budge, you’re not alone. The difference between knowing something isn’t good for you and actually letting it go can feel impossible when you’re in it.

That’s exactly why I do this work. If you want support reclaiming your attention from apps that are designed to steal it, the Digital Freedom Coaching program helps you identify what’s really getting in your way and build sustainable boundaries that actually protect what matters to you.

But whether you work with me or not, remember this: The apps that divide your attention don’t deserve space in your life. You’re not broken. The technology is just that powerful.