Go ahead, guess. How many hours a day do you spend on the little black rectangle occupying your pocket? Now, check your screen time in the settings. For most of us, it can be alarming how much of our day we spend scrolling, staring, sitting, wasting all our free time absorbing gratuitous information. I remember the astounding disbelief I felt when I discovered my average daily cell phone usage was upwards of four hours.
The cell phone is one of the most essential tools we have available to us today. It instantly connects us to our friends and family, provides us with vast sources of worldly news, offers us immediate connection to emergency services, and acts as the most powerful encyclopedia available to man. The smartphone is simply an incredible piece of technology. We should all take a moment to thank the men and women who dreamt it up and brought it into existence. However, having a device that actively taps into our biological rewards systems can easily misdirect our attention away from important matters such as our relationships and ambitions. This brings me to my point that we need to start using our cell phones as a tool, rather than a convenient distraction. I have compiled a few helpful tips that have allowed me to free up some of my unproductive screen time and help me develop a healthy relationship with my mobile device
1. Put your phone in dark mode, or black and white. As humans, we are drawn to light and color. Minimizing our phone’s output of these stimulating elements will reduce the reward we receive when operating our device.
2. Delete your favorite app, at least for a little while. YouTube always had me glued to videos ranging from politics to culinary arts. Though I learned a lot from watching these short films, I found my time was being wasted the most here. I deleted the app and in one week I finished reading an entire book. Without the ability to pop on a video, I turned to a new, healthier form of entertainment. Once you create a better habit, go ahead and return the app to your phone to experience all the positive’s it once brought you before.
3. Don’t use your phone in bed. Just don’t do it. I know the background noise can be soothing in the late hours of the night; however, it is best to wind down with TV on the couch, then retire to your bedroom in the silent, pitch black. The noise and light from our phones disrupts our sleep, not to mention keeps us from sleeping entirely if anything on it catches our attention. Additionally, you never want to associate your bed with anything other than sleeping and cuddling or your brain will not know when it is time for shut eye.
4. Eliminate online friends and followers that you do not truly care about. Do this every few months and it will become much easier to cut down and decide who you truly find joy in keeping up with. Would you rather receive hundreds of likes from strangers, or a handful from the people that deeply care about you? Ask yourself if seeing this person’s life is making you feel closer to them, or if it is causing you to make negative comparisons.
5. Noise up your feed with pretty, yet boring pictures. On my Instagram I only follow city photography pages. Photographs like this are pretty, but never pull me in. After scrolling through five or six pictures of architecture, I quickly get bored and exit the app.
6. Put apps in folders to decrease visibility, limit access, and define your purpose for having the app. Folders turn the colorful icons into tiny, hardly visible boxes inside of a larger gray box. This makes them less tempting to click on. Furthermore, it increases the amount of touches it takes to access the app, thus giving you a moment longer to consider the decision to open it. Also, putting apps in clearly defined categories changes the outlook you have on their use. Instead of putting my YouTube app in the entertainment, or social category, I put it in a folder titled ‘Education.’ When I open the app I now think to only use it for the purpose of learning something new and useful.
7. Only allow utility apps to occupy the first page of your cell phone screen. Try to keep games and social media out of sight by moving them to the second page of your phone. This enforces the idea that the phone is a tool, not a toy.
8. Consider who is sitting in the room with you. Are you neglecting your partner by scrolling your device? Are you missing out on valuable dinner conversation? Using your phone while spending time with someone signals to them that whatever is glowing onto your downturned face holds more value to you than their company. Put your phone out of sign when sharing quality time with the people you love to show them that they have your full, undivided attention.
9. Just delete your social media entirely. I get it, this one is a big ask. I have found a few of my social networking sites to still be useful for me. Those that I currently find value in, I do maintain. However, if there is an account that does not improve your quality of life, or you don’t truly enjoy using it, why not just let it go? Make a list of the pros and cons of each website you are signed up for and try to decrease your internet presence. There is something very sexy about mystery. Let them form an opinion about you based on a conversation, not a series of sloppy selfies and status updates.
10. Make your wallpaper your vision board. This is my favorite tip of them all. Think about how many times a day you check your screensaver to look at the time, or check for notifications (which should be turned off for all apps other than messages btw!). Now imagine each time you unlock your phone, pictures of your dreams and aspirations fill the screen. I think this might be the perfect location for a little reminder of how you should spend your day to keep on track.
I will end with a quote from Machado de Assis, Iaiá Garcia:
“He felt that there is a loose balance of good and evil, and that the art of living consists in getting the greatest good out of the greatest evil.”