Jul 13, 2021
7 Tips to Break Your Phone Addiction
You’ve just sat down to eat your lunch, but something’s missing — that’s right. Your afternoon scroll.
You’ve just lay down to go to sleep for the night — but what’s a harmless phone check? 5 minutes and you’ll put it away to charge.
But you and I both know it’s never really 5 minutes.
From reduced sleep quality, to reduced quality of real life conversations, to simply the wastage of valuable time, it seems our smartphones really cannot be removed from this equation.
It’s difficult, however, to quit using our phones cold turkey. And in today’s world, it’s nearly impossible to stop given our dependence on them for work and communication.
That being said, there are a number of ways you can use your smartphone less — i.e, only use it when you need to, and not let it negatively impact the quality of your life. Here are 7 tips you can implement today.
1. Make use of Digital Wellbeing tools.
Most smartphones these days (iOS and Android) have inbuilt settings that you can take advantage of for your own sake.
This includes turning Focus Mode on, during which you can block certain addictive apps (Instagram scroll-hole sound familiar?) for selected hours of the day. It can also mean setting timers for those apps, so that when your time is up, you can’t use the app anymore.
It may not be ideal that we have to rely on functions within our smartphones to stop us from using said smartphones. But we’ll take what we can get and use them to our advantage.
2. Try a social media detox.
You might have seen Youtubers and Influencers go on about the value of the “social media detox” lately. And rightly so, their smartphone and social media-dependent lives must be taxing. But whether or not you have over 100,000 followers, you could use one too.
Try deleting the app or apps you use most from your phone. Give yourself a week. See how you feel the first day, and then the second, and then stick it out. Maybe your habits will change and you’ll find yourself reaching for your phone less once the week is up.
3. Keep your phone outside your bedroom at night.
Sleeping right next to your phone has been shown to have negative effects on your sleep, even leading to insomnia.
There is a simple way to avoid this, though. Charge your phone outside of your bedroom at night. This will prevent you from checking it and exposing yourself to that blue light just before sleeping. It will also mean you are not tempted to reach for it in the middle of the night either.
Bonus tip: try to stop using your phone at least an hour before you go to bed. Turn it off, put it on Airplane mode or Do Not Disturb.
4. Try an app.
Similar to the Digital Wellbeing tools tip, you could also try apps that are meant to reduce your phone usage. Again, the irony is plainly visible. But it can help to monitor your usage and know just how many times you’ve unlocked your screen. The first step to breaking a habit is to know it exists in the first place.
Examples of apps like these include SPACE, Forest and OFFTIME.
5. Turn off notifications.
Sometimes, we wouldn’t even be tempted to pick up our phones if that little attention-grabbing light or buzz didn’t go off.
There’s an easy solution to this, too. Just turn notifications off in your regular phone settings — specifically for distracting apps.
Some benefits of turning notifications off:
- be less anxious.
- have more time for uninterrupted work/study.
- be more focused.
6. Allot a time of day for your smartphone.
It may sound silly, but you’d be surprised at the lengths you can go with just a bit of intentionality.
Instead of checking your phone first thing in the morning, you could tell yourself that you’ll check at noon. Or in the afternoon. Or even in the evening. At that time only, you can check, respond and scroll more mindfully and intentionally. And you’ll still have the rest of your day to live your life as you would without that distraction.
7. Take a deep breath.
Whenever you have the urge to grab your phone, especially when it is for no particular reason, pause. Take a deep breath in to the count of 4, and breathe out to the count of 8.
Practicing a little bit of mindfulness here and there may help you break your habit. Because ultimately, a habit is only a habit because doing it has become mindless.
It’s not our fault that we’re so addicted to our screens; that’s just how they’re designed. But we live in a world that is increasingly dependent on their usage. What this can mean for us, is to take back control over our own lives before our devices do it for us. It’s all in your hands - literally.
