How to Break Your Phone Addiction
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Has the thought crossed your mind that maybe you’re struggling with social media addiction? Maybe phone addiction? Maybe you’ve simply been checking your phone a little more than you would like to admit?
I’ve struggled with phone addiction for a few years now, and if I’m being honest, I’ve thought all too often about just throwing my phone into the ocean and walking away.
It’s felt like the phone was using me, rather than me using the phone. And will power alone was not going to stop that train.
After hearing the whispers on my heart all this time to let go of social media (absolutely the biggest pull from my phone—get rid of that and I would eliminate most of my phone use all together), it was a podcast that tipped me over the edge.
Within the next few days, I was free from Instagram.
Since deleting my Instagram account, my phone use has dramatically dropped, and honestly, I feel so much calmer and more at peace than I did just a few days ago.
I know that deleting your social media isn’t for everyone. Heck, social media may not even be the biggest pull for you. So, for this particular post, I want to broaden my focus to phone addiction in general and talk about steps you can take to reduce your phone and help you feel calmer and more in control over your tech use.
Turn Off Notifications
After watching the Social Dilemma (an amazingly eye-opening documentary on Netflix) the one recommendation that was emphatically made by every social media engineer was turn off your notifications! They notifications were expertly designed to create a sense of urgency for your brain to make you pick your phone up as much as possible.
Trust me, there’s a 99% chance what is behind that little red bubble is indeed not urgent.
Turn off the notifications and choose a few times a day to check in…but, with intention.
Replace, Replace, Replace
A decade ago my husband and I were sitting on the patio of a swanky little outdoor bistro in central California, dreaming as big as we dared dream. That dream for us at the time, after a couple of glasses of wine, was to get “crazy” and buy a landline.
The thing that has kept me from reducing my phone use for all these years has always been the hundreds of different uses that our phone serves in our daily lives. A camera. A calendar. Podcasts. Email. Connection to community. GPS. Text. Facetiming parents who live across the country. Banking. Music.
…and on and on.
We don’t have this completely figured out yet by any means, but we’ve slowly figured things out over the years.
For me, as stated in the first step, most of the things on my phone I leave to check on the computer. That takes care of a big chunk. And my computer lives in our office downstairs, so that I try my best to keep my kids from seeing me with my nose in a phone as much as possible.
Here is a post with all my suggestions for apps on your phone that you can actually replace with tangible items in real life.
If having a smartphone all together is just too tempting for you, get a flip phone, one of these light phones, or heck, got retro with an actual landline (dreams).
Do a Phone Fast
Taking some time away from your phone, whether it be a few hours or a weekend, can do so much in breaking the hold that a phone addiction has on you. I have always noticed when I do a fast that at first my brain will go haywire thinking of all the things that I want to check on my phone when the fast is up…
but with time, my brain calms down and eventually I find myself not as interested in my phone anymore.
Obviously, this didn’t “cure” me at all of my phone addiction (deleting social media is making the largest dent in that for me), it brought my phone use down each time I did it.
Doing a weekly fast for a day, like a sabbath, could do wonders for lessening your phones hold on you.
Tech Free Zones
Maybe all you need to do to beat your phone addiction is make access to your phone just a little bit harder… Remove the temptation from your proximity and it will cut down your time on your phone immediately. Of course, we still have free will to walk our cute buns over to where we put our phone, however, by nature, humans are lazy. Make it harder for yourself and you’ll quickly see a reduction in time wasting on social media.
Something that seems to help me is leaving my phone out of main living areas. Having the phone in the kitchen distracts me from making dinner in a timely manner or listening with complete presence to my kid tell me about his day. Same with the living room. That is a place to spend time with those who are in the room with you…don’t you think?
Find a place to put your phone that you had to intentionally go to for scrolling. Think of tech use as eating perhaps. We know it’s not good for us mentally and for our health to eat while we’re standing or walking because studies show we eat more and with less mindfullness. So, sit down to “eat”, be intentional about what you’re consuming.
Set a Timer
Even when we sit down to intentionally spend time on social media, email or youtube, it is still so easy for time to fritter away in a scroll hole.
There is something called the ludic loop, a function of your mind that keeps you in front of a slot machine, games like Candy Crush, or social media. The “ludic loop” happens when you’re lulled into a state of near tranquility by doing the same thing over and over, says LifeHacker.
In order to startle yourself out of this almost state of hypnosis, you need to put into place something to give you a pattern interrupt.
In this case, a timer. And with this, you need to actually stop what you’re doing. If these sorts of things don’t work for you, like they didn’t for me, it may be worth considering deleting these accounts completely.
Read also: Is Social Media the Newest Addiction?
Replace the Habit
If you find yourself seeking a dopamine hit from checking social or playing a game on your phone, replacing what you reach for first, with easy access, may be enough to squelch the habit.
Carry a book with you
…or e-reader in your bag to reach for when waiting in the pickup line at your kiddos school, or while standing in line at the store. This will be a far more productive way to spend the time and you won’t feel the gross feeling afterward of feeling like you just wasted your time.
Make a love list
When I first met my husband, he had just moved across the country to the north shore of Boston. All of the people who meant the most to him were on the opposite coast. So in times that he was feeling homesick, and to make sure he was keeping in touch with those people regularly, he made a love list. This was simply a list of the people he loved most, written on a piece of paper that he kept on his dresser near his phone. Each week he would go through the list, calling a couple of people, even if it just meant leaving a voice message.
How can this help you replace your phone habit? Often times we are looking for a quick dopamine hit—or a feeling of pleasure for our brains. Real connection, deeper connection is a sustainable, longer-lasting hit to the brain that gives us those warm fuzzies we are looking for.
So instead of clicking over to Instagram to check in with someone you enjoy following, call up a friend, or even send them a voice text, to catch up real quick. You’ll get the dopamine hit, you’ll be giving the gift to them of those same warm fuzzies and you’ll be fostering a deeper connection with another human being at the same time.
Remove Social Media Apps to Crush Phone Addiction
37 days per year.
That is outlandish number of days per year that the average American spends on social media alone. That doesn’t even account for mail, tv time, work, zoom calls, etc.
Before you close out this tab with my suggestion to remove all distractors from your phone…hear me out. Remember, I’m not even saying here that you delete your account, I’m saying, remove it from your phone.
I feel that so many people I have talked to about this share the same habit that I did in which I would automatically reach for my phone when I was bored, had a minute to wait, or was feeling overwhelmed. I would check out by going on autopilot and scrolling the bottomless pit that was Instagram. Until I come to a painful amount of minutes later realizing that I had just been lost in reels for the last precious amount of time—and that time was completely wasted.
Oh gosh, or worse, the times that I had my face stuck in my phone and one of my sweet children came up to tell me something and I either answered some pathetic response while not really thinking about my answer, or I didn’t hear them at all. Painful.
Just take the app off your phone. The temptation won’t be there. And there will only be so many times that you can check the weather. The pull won’t be so strong.
5-Year Vision
As an activity, I want you to take out a piece of paper and write for just 5 minutes about who you feel you are called to be. What is that vision of yourself that you feel in the back of your mind or pulling at your heart. For me, I want to be a homemaker, a deeply present mother and wife, live much more slowly, write more, and grow all of our food from my backyard.
Who do you want to be?
Now get crystal clear on that image and imagine how you would feel if you somehow, miraculously bumped into 5-years-from-now you. Is she/he anything close to that version of the self you feel called to be?
How is social media playing a role in that? How is phone addiction in general affecting that vision? What version of yourself do you think you’ll become if you continue down this road at this rate?
If you bumped into that version of you in 5 years, how would you feel about it? Would you feel proud of who you’ve become? Or deeply regretful?
I think we get in trouble as a society because we get so stuck in the moment and forget to think long term how our decisions are impacting our future selves and the lives we dream to create.
Implementing these ideas, truly implementing them, will no doubt make a positive impact on your life. Honestly, just the last tip alone will make an impact if you truly do the exercise.
Going back to the idea that the average American spends about 37 days on social media a year… doesn’t that freak you out a bit? Imagine what you could accomplish in 37 days with no distractions…
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