Review | How to Break Up with Your Phone
How to Break Up with Your Phone, Catherine Price (2018)
A practical guide on how to reset your relationship with your smartphone. In barely 200 pages, Catherine price gives you a detailed hands-on 30-day plan to first break up with your phone, then heal your relationship with it in order to get to a more healthy approach to everyday usage of your smartphone. Price added many research-based facts to her 30-day plan, that show how much negative impact phone usage has on personal, as well as societal levels.
I must say, that I didn't even plan to read this book for my July TBR, however I've seen a few recommendations online and I was in the mood, so I decided to just give it a go in between my other reads! Still need to keep a bit of flexibility after all.. ;) For someone who has never done any kind of research on the topic before, this book might be a great first approach to get aware of one's individual level of phone addiction. For me personally, it wasn't too much new information, as I've certainly gotten aware of my excessive screentime quite early on, and over the past years, already tried out various strategies in order to use my phone less and get out of doom scrolling hell. That's why I already had some experience with many tricks the author recommended — which absolutely doesn't mean that they won't work much better for others, than they did for me. However, a few, still quite obvious, tips were actually valuable for me and helped a lot in the end. Counting in my past experience with anti-phone usage strategies, I don't think following the exact 30-day plan by Catherine Price would be of much help for me.
Instead I picked a few tips, that I haven't tried yet, and decided to implement them into my daily routine more often. The book definitely helped me feel motivated again, to get out of my phone addiction (that most of us struggle with by the way — and yes, it is an addiction that should be taken seriously). Many facts she stated, were a great reminder for me, that something needs to be done about this society being so glued to their phones. It's actually quite dystopian, isn't it? So, why don't we act like it? Through reading the book, I'm suddenly hyper-aware of how around me, on public transport, at the doctor's, outside on walks, etc., basically everyone is staring down at their phones. Mostly out of awkwardness or embarrassment, I assume. I've done and still do that, too (unfortunately), although now I'm able to stop myself from doing it. It made me realize and reflect, what's important to me and what I want to pay attention to, in life.
In that sense, the book definitely has its value and as it is a quick and easy read, everyone should think about giving it a chance.
Rating: 3/5
HRCYED 2.0: The Even Bigger Rainbow (Yellow) + Nonfiction (Self-Help)
