Are you addicted to a device?
One sure sign is if you take it to the bathroom with you. If you can’t take a moment for bodily functions without your phone/device, then you’re a rabid stockbroker or addicted to your device.
Taking Control:
The first step to fighting social media addiction is to decide “you’re in control”. Your time is important, time can never be redeemed. Once a moment is spent, it’s gone forever. It can be remembered fondly, but it can never be repeated or changed.
Explain to family and friends, that you don’t always respond right away. You may be busy, or just don’t feel like texting or posting to social media at times. If they don’t want to understand that, it is on them. The excuse of, “How will you know it’s not an emergency” is not a valid excuse. A phone call is placed faster, if not as fast as a text, or social posting. Teach others, that the phone portion still works on the devices, and sometimes that is your preferred way of communicating.
Help Yourself break the habit:
I decided, that I would not be a slave to a device. “I” control my time. I started by leaving my phone in the other room for short periods. When I returned to the room after whatever I’d been doing, I would check it for a missed call or other communication. Many understood, some stopped texting me as much. Maybe their ego was Injured by the removal of instant gratification. Or maybe they simply understood. You’ll be amazed at how long you can go after a while, without checking for texts and social media updates. It’s like breaking any other habit. Baby Steps.
Turn off Auto notifications:
This gives you control. No more interruptions during dinner, theater, or conversations with others. Decide you are going to live without listening for a notification from social media and check it when “you” want. This is you controlling your time and life. At night, my phone is set to only allow notifications or phone calls from family. All of them know by now that it is set that way, and I don’t do midnight texting or calls unless it’s an emergency.
Stop watching me:
If you don’t know it yet. Social media is the biggest privacy leech invented. It knows what you discuss, read, search for, and produces ads based on these things. It also partners with other ad producers and social platforms to do the same. I have deleted my Twitter account. I mean, what does it actually do for me. Other than make me feel important once in a while when something gets retweeted.
I wish you luck, if breaking the habit is something you want, or need to do. It will give you less stress, more time, and improve your personal interaction with others. So, forget that phone for a moment, then make it two moments, then three. Suddenly, you’ll be looking for where you left it the last time, or you’ll place it on a table for easy access, just like our old landlines that didn’t rule our lives.
Do you have any ideas to help? Think you can do it, or do you want or need to do it. Maybe it’s too important to some. That is a decision we all have to make as individuals. Me? I feel in control, liberated.
Comments always welcome.
I would never think of taking a phone into the bathroom. Like you, I have ignored so many text messages and calls, I now hardly ever get any, except from my wife. I leave my phone in the same place, and never in the living room or dining room. I check it in the mornings when I get up, and then maybe once late evening.
But I know people who sleep with their phone on the bed next to them, afraid of missing some trivial nonsense during the night.
Could be there will never be a cure, Ron. It’s too late!
Best wishes, Pete.
I agree, Pete. They’re probably never will be a cure. Too many people just seem to not care anymore about interacting on a personal level. I can’t imagine having a phone next to me in bed just to catch a text message in the middle of the night. But each to their own as they say. Thanks for the nice comment. We are both of the same mind.
The best thing I did to improve my sleep was to turn off my devices a couple of hours before bedtime. The blue light really did a number on my sleep pattern.
I’ve seen that suggestion in articles, Janis. Michelle is the same way, any light at night bugs her.
I have neither the phone nor any other text device in our bedroom. I do listen to audio books. I generally think if something is truly urgent someone will pound on the front door!
You’re right, Elizabeth. If they can’t get me by phone, and it’s a true emergency, someone will beat on my door I’m sure. Audio books would be a nice way to fall to sleep.
And they ensure marital harmony because Charlie goes to sleep much earlier than I do. That way we can cuddle and I can read in the dark after he goes off to sleep.(He also gets up terribly early.)
Michelle loves to read. Some nights if it’s a good book, she will be reading into the wee hours of the morning.
We share an addiction!
That’s marvelous that you are in control of your device.
If anyone loves gadgets, it would be me. I just refuse to be slaved to one. Kind of like a job, then it’s no fun.
I love gadgets, too.
I don’t have a smartphone and only use my phone to have for emergencies while out walking or driving. But I am tethered to my laptop too many hours in a day and it’s been that way since I started working from home in 2011. I look forward to retirement in a full years to step away from the screen more often.
Computers can be stressful, if they are a job and you have to spend so much time on them. I’m fortunate since I don’t work and can get up and walk away when I need a break.
I hope to cut down my screen time when I retire Ron. It was not as bad before I started blogging … I also got more done around the house, as opposed to nowadays.
I hope you get to retire soon, Linda. Screen time can drain you, especially when it is work related.
Yes it can – I am looking forward to retirement Ron. It is draining being on here hours on end. I get up and take a walk around the house every so often. I’ll be 65 next month. I’m hanging in there until my boss retires. He will be 74 this Wednesday, but wants to work until 2022, so he can say he was a lawyer for 50 years like his father.
I agree entirely!