I'm a Gen Z who ditched my smartphone alarm for a $16 clock, and it completely changed my mornings

I was sick of wasting my time on my phone in the mornings. So I got an alarm clock.

Roya Shahidi/Business Insider

• As a Gen Z, I've grown up in the era of smartphone alarm clocks being the default.
• But I noticed both my mornings and evenings devolving into doomscrolling.
• A $16 analog has helped change my habits, though the trade-off hasn't been without anxiety.

For years, my morning routine consisted of setting the alarm on my iPhone half an hour early, hitting snooze every nine minutes...