Like the majority of the others, you also must have had that instinctive urge to pick up your phone and use it without any reason. Why? Because you’re bored! What you’re experiencing is quite similar to the other known forms of behavioral addiction. Just like in the cases of shopping or gambling addictions, your brain tends to release a very small amount of dopamine in different areas of the brain and it makes us coming back for more. This is unconscious behavior.
- On average, a common cell phone user tends to touch his or her phone 2,617 times a day.
- Along with that, on average, most people spend three hours on their phones each day.
- 60% of all phones, pickups happen within three minutes of a previous one.
Phones were
invented to be good and helpful, and they are. Just up to a certain limit. It’s
not a hidden fact that they have the potential to become the biggest negative
thing in our life if we allow them.
Before you
read about the tricks and tips to reduce your phone usage, let’s look at some
of the effects of excessive phone usage -
1. Wastage of
time – Time and tide wait for none. But can you wait to go through your phone
until you complete all your tasks? Yes, you can,
2. Negative
impact on mental health – Do you check your phone just because you feel you’ll
miss out a lot if you don’t? Welcome to the club. Your phone has now full
control over you. It does nothing but exists and we still check it every third
minute?
3. Anxiety
and/or depression – Gone are the days when the last person you saw before you
slept was your loved one. Now, it’s your phone. Scrolling through social media
before you sleep definitely affects your mental health. And to an extent that
you haven’t imagined,
4. Overuse of
your cell phone can lead to reduced quality of personal relationships,
5. Tired all day - People go to sleep only when
their eyes are aching from all day surfing and scrolling their phones. When you
wake up, you’re still tired; even if you’ve slept for 10 hours.
So how would
you keep your phone usage in proper alignment with your mental health? Here are
some tips and tricks –
1. Analyze how
you use your phone and accordingly set limits – There is a screen time feature
in every phone android/ iOS that displays to you how much time you have spent
on what app of your phone. Also in some, it shows you how often do you open up
your device.
2. Eliminate all
the distracting apps – You already are aware of which apps are addictive for you.
So, either shift those apps to the second page where it’s comparatively harder
for you to open them spontaneously or you can just remove them.
3. Minimize
notifications – Trust me. This is the best option to detox yourself. When you
open up your phone between work and see no notification, your brain tricks you
into believing that let’s continue the work until somebody texts. Your
productivity will increase simultaneously.
4. Avoid using
your phone before going to bed - Staring at the screen before your bedtime
affects the quality of sleep you take.
5. Set Timers for
Apps – Instagram provides you with an option to set a timer for their app.
Beyond which, you’ll be notified of the timings. Same for Digital Wellbeing.
It’s just a stricter version. It won’t let you use the app when you’ve crossed
the daily limit. A better option.
6. Put a hair tie
around your phone – Often people recommend using a hair tie around your cell
phone so that it acts as an obstruction. When placed in the middle of the
phone, it makes the use of the phone more difficult (including simple texting
and scrolling/surfing).
7. Complicate
your phone passcode – Probably the easiest to do because you might feel lazy in
typing the long password to enter. This also might help you question yourself
as in why are you opening your phone. But it might only be helpful in the
beginning because even when there’s a strong long password, eventually your
fingers tend to move on their own,
Take
phone-free meals,
Try to keep
yourself busy so that you don’t get time to check your phone for unwanted
reasons,
Keep the phone
in your bag when going to meet somebody,
Start slow.
Instead of going to stone-age and completely eliminating your phone use, start
with reducing the amount of time you spend checking your phone.
Written by –
Ritika Singh
Edited by - Bushra Mkahdoomi
Social