Somehow the human race survived before smartphones.

Remember when everyone wasn’t so distracted and anxious? When we could focus — on work, on each other, on a moment in time? There was peace in not being available every second, in not being expected to respond, in not needing to know immediately.

We’ve lost the art of being able to just “be.”

So what’s stopping us? Possibly, addiction. Tuesday’s column explored the emerging phenomenon of cellphone addiction, with too many familiar signs. What was once simply a tool has become an almost-mindless obsession.

Can we crack it? Is there happiness without hardware?

Work and other practicalities make smartphone divorce unrealistic, but there is hope between extremes.

New York Times writer Kevin Roose took a hard look at his own obsession, and with frank humor shared his journey to “unbreak (his) brain” — which he described as lifechanging.

“My name is Kevin, and I have a phone problem.”

While “addiction” may sound like overkill, Roose — a millennial and self-described heavy phone user — called what’s happening to our brains a species-level environmental shock. We aren’t built to live in harmony with portable connections to infinite amounts of stimulation.

“But sometime last year, I crossed the invisible line into problem territory. My symptoms were all the typical ones: I found myself incapable of reading books, watching full-length movies or having long uninterrupted conversations (without checking the phone).”

So what did he do? What any journalist would: He called a source for help. Catherine Price, science writer and author of “How to Break Up With Your Phone,” a 30-day guide to eliminating bad phone habits, coached Roose to build a healthy relationship with his phone.

Start with statistics. Late models have a feature in settings (mine says “screen time”) which tracks use. According to a 2018 Deloitte Consumer Survey, the average American looks at his phone 52 times daily, and 63 percent are trying to reduce that. Awareness is step one. Is each look necessary?

Recognize emotional triggers. Bored? Lonely? Anxious? Ironic, because smartphone use tends to make these worse. Price says the point isn’t to get you off the internet — do that in more focused sessions at the computer — but to unhook the brain from the harmful check and recheck phone habit.

Create “speed bumps.” Once you recognize a trigger, redirect: Connect with a human being, in-person or by voice. Pick up a book. Take a walk outside (sans gadget).

Change your lock screen. Price told Roose to customize his lock screen to show three questions: What for? Why now? What else can you do?

Reform habits. Roose became acutely aware of his bizarre phone habits. He reached for the phone when he brushed his teeth. He always checked email during the three-second window while a chip reader read his credit card. I do that when I plug or unplug mine from the car while parked. When you reach again, stop.

“Mostly, I became aware of how profoundly uncomfortable I am with stillness,” Roose writes. “For years, I’ve used my phone every time I’ve had a spare moment in an elevator or a boring meeting. I listen to podcasts and write emails on the subway. I watch YouTube videos while folding laundry. I even use an app to pretend to meditate.”

Delete/hide apps you really don’t need — and push through jitters. Most of us don’t even use (or need) all the home screen apps. Or should cut down — say on games. If you can’t bring yourself to delete, “hide” by dumping them in the utilities folder to reduce temptation. Not a bad idea for social media buttons while you’re working on the habit.

“I pruned my home screen to just the essentials: calendar, email and password manager,” Roose writes. “And I disabled push notifications for everything other than phone calls and messages from a preset list of people that included my editor, my wife and a handful of close friends.”

Expect some withdrawal at first, but the more you replace the temptations with other, healthier activities, the less “tug” you’ll feel.

Practice mental stillness, even momentary. “Doing nothing” really isn’t — it’s reset time for your brain. Brains, like phones, need to reboot. Outwardly focusing is also an antidote for bad feelings.

“So during my morning walk to the office, I looked up at the buildings around me, spotting architectural details I’d never noticed before,” Roose writes. “On the subway, I kept my phone in my pocket and people-watched — noticing the nattily dressed man in the yellow hat, the teens … laughing, the kid with Velcro shoes. When a friend ran late for our lunch, I sat still and stared out the window instead of checking Twitter.”

Keep it out of the bedroom. Oh yes you can. A 2018 UK study — aptly called Sleeping with the Frenemy — concluded:

1. Not using or charging smartphones in the bedroom increases happiness

2. Going to bed without smartphones in the bedroom improves sleep. We could all use some of that.

Less phubbing makes better relationships. Psychologists call it “phubbing” — snubbing a person in favor of your phone. Phubbing decreases relationship satisfaction and contributes to feelings of depression and alienation.

It wasn’t easy at first for Roose. He felt he might miss something important, missed news streams. But his wife said she’d been loving it.

“She explained that since my phone detox started, I’d been more present and attentive at home. I spent more time listening to her, and less time distractedly nodding and mumbling while checking my inbox or tapping out tweets.”

A Walden experiment? Roose took it all the way, what he called “a Thoreau cleansing,” with a 48-hour period of no phone or digital device use at all. He dreaded the idea, but ended up loving it.

“I basked in 19th-century leisure, feeling my nerves softening and my attention span stretching back out. I read books. I did the crossword puzzle. I lit a fire and looked at the stars. I felt like Thoreau, if Thoreau periodically wondered what was happening on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Instagram story.

“I also felt twinges of anger — at myself, for missing out on this feeling of restorative boredom for so many years … But I cannot stress enough that under the right conditions, spending an entire weekend without a phone in your immediate vicinity is incredible. You have to try it.”

Writing about the compelling, fast-moving online world and the “offline” world, he concluded:

“(S)omething fundamental has shifted inside my brain in the past month … I still love that world, and probably always will. But now, the physical world excites me, too — the one that has room for boredom, idle hands and space for thinking … I look people in the eye and listen when they talk. I ride the elevator empty-handed. And when I get sucked into my phone, I notice and self-correct.

“It’s not a full recovery, and I’ll have to stay vigilant. But for the first time in a long time, I’m starting to feel like a human again.”

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Sholeh Patrick is a columnist for the Hagadone News Network. Email: sholeh@cdapress.com