Time For A Digtal Detox
By: Cullen Munson
Before this pandemic, I was never one to spend too much time on my phone. Words I try to live by are to live in the moment, this mostly includes putting the phone down and being present. Since last March, I have seen my screen time rise immensely as living in the moment as living in the moment has become difficult and isolated. My screen time has almost doubled, and I have found myself obsessed with mindlessly scrolling through different apps just to pass time throughout the day. My life used to be filled with tons of errands and activities throughout the day that kept me busy and off my phone. Due to these unprecedented times, there is not much I can do that does not involve a screen. My day to day life now feels like I am just switching between laptop, phone and TV. With school being online and my phone being my number one way to pass time, my screen time has reached 8 hours a day. To me, this is a gross amount of screen time. Because of this large increase in screen time, I think it’s time to look into blue light glasses before my eyeballs fall out (me being dramatic of course).
As my screen time has increased, I have noticed I feel very connected and involved in what is going on online. It has become a habit to check my phone multiple times a day to see what other people are up to or read the latest news. I have felt a sense of anxiety/stress when it comes to staying connected and on top of the latest updates. If I haven’t been on my phone for an hour, I have this great urge to check my phone and see what’s changed on my social media apps. I have even found myself checking apps 2 minutes after closing an app and this is very unhealthy to me. If I weren’t allowed to check my phone whenever I please I think that my stress and anxiety would increase as this has been my norm for the last few months. I am very invested in my apps right now.
My increase in screen time and investment to my apps calls for a change. I have always been told that everything is good in moderation and this needs to be applied to my screen time as soon as possible. Reducing my screen time would decrease my stress and anxiety and also get rid of any negative distractions my phone has on my life. While this will be a hard change, Iphone’s now have many different options that can help me with a much-needed digital detox. The first thing that I found out that I can do is schedule screen time downtime. This allows me to schedule a specific time of the day to be away from my screen. There are many restrictions I can add to this downtime such as only being able to access specific apps or being able to only allow phone calls or texts. I think the best way to go about reducing my phone screen is to set a goal amount of phone screen time for the day and I can do this through scheduling downtime. I would start by slowly decreasing my screen time to ease into getting used to less screen time. As time goes on, I would add more and more restrictions to the downtime until I am happy with my internet habits and screen time duration.
I think through the downtime scheduling, this would not only decrease my screen time but also decrease negative distractions. To me, those go hand in hand as social media is just a distraction to being bored. The more connected I am, the bigger the distraction my phone has on my life. By decreasing and restricting my screen time, these distractions would become less distracting as I would have to adjust to having less availability to my apps. This will take some time, but I believe I can do it if I really put my mind to it. I definitely think a digital detox is in order for me.
