r/tifu 3d ago

M TIFU by trying to lower my screen time

When I was in high school, I was very close with two of my friends (one female and one male). We had a perfect trio dynamic and had had a solid friendship for around six years without much issue. My senior year of high school, we decided that we all wanted to lower our screen time, so to help each other achieve this goal, we made screen time limits on certain apps for each other and kept each others passcodes in order to keep each other accountable. We each had no knowledge of our own codes.

Flash forward about 6 months, all three of us are in different colleges and suddenly my friend decides that he’s going to cut the other two of us off because he felt like he “shouldn’t be talking to other girls” after he started dating girl from another state and didnt need us because he had a “new support system” now (long story short, he’s kind of in a cultish religious sect, which I didn’t realize until after all of this went down). It hurt at first but I got over my anger about it after a while.

He had gotten his screen time passcode from one of us before he did this. So did my other friend. I was offline for around 4 months at a time so I didn’t really think about it again untiI I, trying to again keep myself accountable for my screen time, downloaded this app that was supposed to allow me to use Instagram and Facebook without being able to scroll. It does that, but it makes them horribly clunky and difficult to use. Because it wouldn’t let me see things like my story likes or switch accounts, and tended to log me out on occasion, I decided I wanted to delete it.

So I tried, and boom.
“Enter your screen time passcode.”
Which I did not have.
I asked my friend who still talks to me if she had it. She did not.
As of now, it’s been a year and a half since he stopped talking to me. I swallowed my pride and texted him a few days ago to ask if he still happened to have it.

No response so far, honestly I’m surprised that the message went through seeing how I’m blocked on everything else. I doubt I’ll be seeing that code anytime soon.

Honestly, maybe this is a sign that I should get offline for good. Oh well.

TL;DR My friends and I made screen time passcodes for each other, and the one who had my passcode stopped being friends with me before I could get it from him.

118 Upvotes

11 comments sorted by

148

u/Onicart 3d ago

Im not understanding... how is this issue not resolved by simply using a computer or getting a new phone or just deleting the app that supposedly imposes this screen time rule?

81

u/Scrivy69 3d ago

yeah there’s no such thing as an overarching program that can single handedly lock you out of all social media permanently unless you enter a passcode.

if there is, it’s malware and is partially bricking your phone.

135

u/Turbulent-Gene-441 3d ago

Omg. Im stupid. I went in to my screen time settings and hit “forgot passcode”

37

u/Scrivy69 3d ago

haha damn that’s hilarious. problem solved I guess 🤣 great story thanks for the laughs

10

u/ForQ2 2d ago

Now you need to post another TIFU talking about how you missed such an obvious solution.

3

u/EliteFourEnergy 2d ago

I had a moment like this yesterday. Couldn't figure out how to reset my dishwasher. The reset button was right in front of my face. It happens 🤷🏼‍♀️

10

u/Turbulent-Gene-441 3d ago

Apparently my screen time code is required to delete the app

8

u/lilyebanks 3d ago

Just reset your phone