Mobiles have become an indispensable part of our lives. They are amazing multitaskers combining a medley of technologies in one device – online payment, gps navigation, messaging, phone, music player, and more. Smartphone use has become an addiction and taken the form of an epidemic and stats mention that the usual cell phone user hits his or her device 2,617 times daily. On average most people give 3 hours and 15 minutes to their phones daily.
People frequently become hooked to the phone as they desire to avoid reality, acquire social karma, deal with stress resulting from social anxiety and reduced self-esteem, pursue their longing for social recognition, likes, and other kinds of rewards, or participate in rewarding games. The continuous transmission of digital rewards and data can draw a person into addiction and daily problems can drive an individual toward addiction. Social media addiction typically relates to such “internet reward points.”
Despite all the benefits of technology, your smartphone mustn’t be your sole friend and pal for conversation in this world. Phone addiction resembles drug addiction, alcoholism, and gambling. Obviously, it won’t harm your health alike alcohol though its “toxicity” impacts human consciousness and connections to the world. Delve into these effective strategies to aid you and your child to get rid of phone addiction:
Buy A Feature Phone
If you possess some additional cash and can manage a feature phone, it is the finest way to overcome your smartphone addiction. Social media applications are lacking in a feature phone, which has backing for some games, which do not appeal to the millennial group and, the fundamental use of a feature phone is calling. This will hugely aid to fight your addiction as you will be unable to perform majority of the tasks performed by you with your normal smartphone.
When you are traveling out, attempt to adopt the same as this is among the, if not the most, efficient ways of fighting addiction to smartphones. Another probability of this is to return to utilizing an earlier phone that you may be owning, as that also will lack a few applications and, in view of the downgrades as compared to your smartphone, it will lead to reduced usage as you will feel embarrassed in doing so.
Make Alterations To Your Notifications
Notifications are among the most irritating disturbances that might result in addiction. You complete your task and want to put away your phone, but, the notification pings begin arriving. This causes doom scrolling, unending tweets, besides more. If you can manage your notifications, you can lessen your smartphone obsession to an extent.
The optimum way to achieve so is to close or silence notifications for all disturbing apps, like social media applications, YouTube and also messaging apps. Retain only the most essential notifications apps, for you to not leave out important stuff.
Eliminate Unwanted Applications
Whenever a new smartphone is configured by somebody, they download their preferred apps. In achieving so, occasionally one downloads different apps, of which some are habit-forming. These applications may not be needed by you, but, you desire to continue opening them. This is an issue that can be resolved and, if one so feels, they can remove the unrequired application.
This will hugely help repel screen usage and, will also result in freeing up your smartphone space. This typically works finest on games that one is not keen on playing but still play. Thereby one will get to de-addict themselves from utilizing their smartphone as frequently as they would if the app existed on their device.
Switching Off Your Phone When Going To Bed
This might appear mundane. You desire to go to sleep, you go to bed and, 10 minutes after you are using your phone. This is not an unusual sight and, it is bothersome. This is an indication of smartphone addiction. To fight this, one can adopt a very simple step of switching off your smartphone before getting into bed.
This will be extremely useful to you in the long term in multiple ways. Initially, switching off your smartphone makes you sleep better, which will offer you several health benefits for a long time. Next, if you do not utilize the smartphone while attempting to sleep, if will improve your eyesight also.
Generally, when one gets into bed, they take off their glasses. Operating a phone minus your glasses might cause a rise in the power of your glasses, which is not liked by anyone. By removing the use of a phone when in bed, you can prevent getting glasses or raising the number of your spectacles.
Using Applications For Assistance
Occasionally, you require a slight enforcement to lessen your smartphone usage. To accomplish this, there are applications present that can aid you restrict your smartphone use. There are numerous apps present in Google Play Store that lock the apps that may be disturbing and you will get to utilize these apps after a specified duration.
A few of these apps include StayFree – Screen Time Tracker, ActionDash, and YourHour – Phone Addiction Tracker, etc. All these apps monitor your smartphone use behavior and monitor the apps that you employ most often. You can fix a predefined moment for every individual app or a group of apps, which when surpassed will lock the app for the day and you will be unable to access the app. These apps assist in keeping your perfect smartphone usage harmony and can aid limit smartphone addiction.
If you use a smartphone with stock Android then your gadget would have arrived with Digital Wellbeing feature, which is contained on most recent stock Android smartphones. These aid one target and fight their smartphone addiction like checking the duration they have used a specific app and, restricting usage of these specific apps.
It also displays you the duration you have expended on your phone and maintains a log of the complete usage during the past few weeks and months. This is a useful feature in ascertaining how much you utilize your smartphone and monitoring your usage pattern.
Utilizing A Smart Watch
Occasionally you use your smartphone to view the time and different facets. To lower your smartphone use, if you have some additional cash, you could perhaps purchase a smartwatch. This is a nice thing to do and, this is a kind of delegation.
By purchasing a smartwatch, you can employ it to monitor your time, review your phone notifications and, if you binged on a premium model, also make calls. This comprises the normal smartwatch features of identifying steps, and heart rate, besides more. This feature aid most people in combating their smartphone addiction problem.
Set A Time For Un-tracked Phone Use
Give yourself your desired time within a defined daily limit at a particular hour of the day. Random experiences and random notifications are potent in inviting you to examine your phone accurately as they are random. Unforeseen notifications and call-to-actions are difficult to expect so the brain optimizes its potential reward (feeling awesome) by continuously creating the inclination to grab the phone and inspect. Fix an hour to devote to your phone or form a habit to review it every 45 minutes. That way, the rewards will be tough to expect but they will happen at a recognized time and make it simpler for your brain to adjust than entirely leaving your phone.
Reflect On Your Expectations
Constant short-time phone inspection may have plenty to do with what you are anticipating from phone usage. It would assist to introspect and question yourself what you hope for – is it a fruitful experience? Are you expecting someone to come to you? Is it a social interplay? Are you wanting some thrilling change? Do you desire an upsurge of notifications but not receive any? These queries will aid you find out what psychological requirements your phone is atoning for. Perhaps it’s the need for social acceptance or belongingness or a requirement to feel wanted. Attempt to fulfill those necessities in healthier ways. Typically, communicating with people in person and performing some purposeful activity will fulfill those needs.
Classify Your Phone Activities and Allot A Time For Each Activity
Split your smartphone activity into groups and assign 2-5 minutes to each group. Perform this at least 1+ hour after awaking and 1+ hour before sleeping. This will aid you detach the phone behavior from waking and sleep onset. You can perform a filler activity in between that is satisfying (supporting your brain’s reward system in a better way). Ignore all meaningless activities and simply perform the top two activities. For instance, if you wish to inspect Instagram updates for a specific profile, do that. Forget the scrolling. If you wish to Snapchat with anyone, simply do that. Ignore reposting those snaps on IG.
Follow Phone-Down Routines
Whenever you are spending time with your friends and all display too much phone use, place an alarm on your phone and follow a phone-down routine. You can begin with 15 minutes and raise it later. Just place your phones facing down upon a table. Add to the fun by maintaining a tally or conditions such as “whoever lifts the phone first, buys an individual their coffee”.
Switch Off Non-important Notifications
Many people die and live by their notifications and drool for them. Each buzz, ding, and chime prompts a delightful dopamine hit to the brain, and every of these hits encourages the habit loop and prompts the craving for further notifications.
Turn off all unimportant communications like:
All alerts and news feeds
All social media notifications
Email notifications for non-important accounts
All messages and game updates
All ‘badges’ (the red marks that make you heart palpitate with the amount of your unread messages)
Turn Your Screen Black & White
If you’re finding it hard living without badges or notifications and you anxiously wonder what you’ve missed, the following step is lessening the appeal of your smartphone and those pretty pictures and bright red dots.
If you believe it’s an accident that the small badges for your unread messages appear red, think once more. This is still another extremely deliberate decision by app makers to make you seem like each update, each message, and each ‘Like’ is urgent and needs your greatest attention. Moreover, there is a reason that Facebook invested a whopping sum to acquire Instagram – scrolling across a feed packed with beautiful pictures induces you to scroll for more beautiful pictures. The more they grab your attention, the greater revenue they achieve.
Abruptly those unread messages appear far less urgent.
You’ll be surprised at how much reduced time you wish to devote to your phone when it’s completely black and white. Those “urgent” notification badges just merge into the background and get nearly invisible. And the pictures of expansive landscapes, sumptuous meals, or motivational quotes begin to feel quite bland.
Keep Your Phone Away When Performing Creative Work
You’ve switched off notification, your phone is tortuously boring in black and white, and your home screen is no more any fun. Still you just feel the need to “simply verify” the time, what’s occurring on Snapchat or Facebook, or your email. Or maybe while performing creative work you abruptly find yourself unlocking your phone not just because you wish to but since it’s just grown into muscle memory.
Don’t be alarmed, you can still get over this addiction. You simply have to physically shift your phone from site and put it somewhere away from arm’s reach. So long as your phone is sufficiently far away for you to take your hands off your keyboard and move away from the workstation, the probability that you’ll wish to inspect in every couple of minutes dramatically falls.
Bottom Line
Keep in mind that the addiction happens when there are issues in your life. If you live a wholesome life, have right ways to overcome hardships like interacting with your dearest and nearest, you’re less probable to get an addiction. So the permanent solution to get less hooked to your phone does not involve the phone itself. Rather, it concerns more the shift of the priorities and assigning more time to people surrounding you.
