De-vice your device: tips to decrease screen time 📱🔒
Build the habit of turning off your phone from time to time. We're so used to just charging and charging our phones but never turning it off, but any electronic device needs to be turned off from time to time. Start by turning it off when you go to sleep, whether it's a nap or night time, and then move on to just turning it off after you're done using it.
Review often what you're using your phone for. Are you using too many apps that just result in you mindlessly staring at the screen, stuck in scrolling? Are you following every single news story or tabloid gossip that pops up? Is the content you're engaging with really entertaining, really enriching, really necessary? Be more critical of what you're doing with your phone in the first place.
Turn your notifications off. Unless you have an ongoing responsibility that requires you to be reachable 24/7, no matter where you are or what you're doing, otherwise someone's life may be at peril, then there's no reason for you to be available at all times, and definitely not immediately. It's important to be humble and admit that you're simply not needed that urgently! When you're truly available, check your apps and then you'll know whether there's something new or not.
Replace as many phone functionalities as you can. If your phone is your camera, your alarm clock, your agenda, your books, your music, your wallet, your social life, then of course you're going to be stuck to it all day long. Take your needs off from your phone as much as possible, separate your life from it. I promise you, most things that entertain, inform and aid in daily life have their own specific device/gadget. (And they're often cheap to get, since so many people have replaced them with phones!)
Go out without your phone as often as you can. Like I said, unless you're absolutely needed for life-or-death situations, there's no need for you to be on your phone at all times. That means that when you're outside, doing something important or just taking a walk, there's no need for you to be glued to a screen. Whatever is there, it can wait until you're home.
Embrace boredom. It's fine, and even suggested often that it's necessary, to be bored once in a while. You don't need to be "doing something", absorbing information, at all times. You don't need to watch a video while you eat, or listen to a podcast while you do chores, or talk to friends while you're in the shower. You can just do a mundane task and let it be that, and you can feel like there's nothing to do and then do nothing. That's not a bad thing.
Keep your phone physically away when you can, especially away from bed. Having your phone within arm's reach at all times contributes to the act of constantly picking it up, which becomes automatic after a very short while. If your phone is not available at all times, you'll break the automatic response cycle of reaching for it (the same goes for turning it off). And it's especially important to not be on your phone in bed, so that you don't keep the habit of being glued to the screen until the last possible moment, or ruining your sleep cycle because of it.
Allow your life to have waits and doubts. If you're trying to remember something, it's okay to not remember it, you don't have to look it up immediately. If you want to talk to someone, you don't have to text them immediately. Basically, you don't have to interrupt most things by reaching for your phone just to try and get an immediate response, answer, reaction. Let things hang in the air, or leave them for later.
Consider just deleting yourself. I say this especially to the younger people who have never experienced life without phones and especially without social media. Consider the action of just deleting some, if not all, social media accounts and subscriptions you have, at least for a determined amount of time. I, and a lot of tech specialists and psychologists, suggest the period of at least six months to do a real tech detox. You simply can't understand what life is like without social media and the current state of being online unless you actually experience it. It may seem radical, and to be fair, it is, but isn't it also radical for a young person to be addicted to their phone?
(This was originally posted on my old account)
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