How To Break An Addiction To Smartphones

This year, the first of May, my college senior’s birthday. So I called her and her husband to chat after a long time. Recently he has received a national award for best research work with his team. I shared my excitement about it. He asked, how do you know this. I said, “Your research advisor uploaded photos in his Social Media.”

“Oh, sister! I don’t use social media. But, if we can utilize smartphones, we can do lots of valuable works,” he said. But, like many of us, I am addicted to the smartphone. Then how to break an Addiction to the smartphone?

Me and My Smartphone

My father gave me my first phone (not a smart one) in 2010, so I could only call, text, and play snake xenzia.

I bought my first smartphone in 2016. Nowadays, I use my smartphone to make calls, messages, E-mail, WhatsApp, scan, and social media such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Still, I don’t play games at all. I stopped it a few years ago. Instead, I often check social media to see what is going on around and see updated news. Also, I watch YouTube for entertainment and knowledge gathering purposes. I am also working on the laptop for over 12 hours for office and writing works.

Therefore, I reconsidered my screening time and what I felt when using the smartphone excessively. Hence, I searched over the internet for why screening time matters, its impacts, and immediate solutions.

Monitor your smartphone screen time to break the smartphone addiction.

References say that in 2019 the average smartphone screening time per person is 3 hours and 40 minutes per day in the United States. During and after the pandemic, it increased by 20 minutes a day. The UK figures are also similar to the US.

The average screening time continues to increase due to working from home culture, Online streaming, Social Media, and Gaming.

For your information, 3.8 billion people (48.33%) of the world’s population use smartphones.

If a person is screened a smartphone for 3 hours per day, that equals 475 million man-days (1.3 million man-years).

Oh my god!

My smartphone screen time

After knowing this, two days before, I checked my smartphone screening time in the night before going to sleep. It said 4 hours and 28 minutes (I think the average value is better than mine).

Screen Time is a dashboard with a quick view of how much time I spent that day on my smartphone, how many notifications I received on it, and how many times I opened my smartphone. I could get results by clicking on “Digital Welfare and Parental Controls” of the setting app on my Android smartphone.

There are four hormones that are responsible for our happiness. Dopamine is the reward hormone that gets us excited about every accomplishment. This brain chemical is also addictive. Drugs and alcohol are addictive because it induces dopamine every time someone uses them. Just like drugs, the same hormone is causing smartphone addiction. Every time you receive a message, or most other activities on a smartphone, it pumps dopamine. That’s when the happy hormone becomes evil.

Yes. I overused the smartphone and had an addiction too. Let us read what I realized due to excessive phone use.

What I realized on smartphone addiction

1. It reduced my connections with my family members.

Sometimes, I don’t have time to call my family members as tasks are pending. It could have been done if the time spent on the smartphone was controlled.

2. The brain is overloaded with information:

I did not purchase a television(TV), as I own a smartphone to receive information and updates at my fingertips. I guess TV will overload news and added expense. By the way, the truth is social media of smartphones are overloading information. Many media are repeating the same messages, such as crime stories, pandemics, and investigations. Now I am tired of listening to breaking news. Also, some are not as important as they exaggerate. I feel they don’t show the most beautiful things on the outside.

As an initial step to overcoming information overloading, I am following a few media sources. However, the problem is not resolved fully.

3. It affects me psychologically.

Mental stress, tension, depression, carelessness, feeling restless, angry on non-important matters, and irritation are the side effects affecting me psychologically. All symptoms are generally related to each other. Of course, that influences the surrounding people. Tell me if you feel the same way.

4. Loneliness

I sometimes experienced loneliness when using smartphones frequently, but I managed to be alone.

5. A gradual decline in imagination, creativity, responsibility, awareness, and memory.

I notice these over the years after I reduced reading books and began to use my smartphone. Reading your articles and writing in Medium encourages me a lot to boost my thinking again. Also, I read books again.

6. Eye strain and Headache.

You may question how you feel about it? Yes, Suppose I use the smartphone for a long time to reduce the stress (to deceive me) due to the workload and overuse of the laptop. In that case, I state, I feel all parts of my brain going here and there. As a result, I cannot think sharply about what I really want to. This continues for two days until I sleep well.

7. Disturbance to Sleep

As per the references, a human aged 26–64 should get at least 7 to 9 hours of sleep. Yet, my sleep time is significantly less than that, mainly due to the smartphone.

Suppose I forgot to switch on Flight mode/Airplane mode or silent in volume sections. As such, unimportant notifications in the middle of sleep interfere with my sleep. Of course, after that, I check social media for any important news. But it is really disturbing, right. Thus, just a few months ago, I used to keep my phone outside the room. Still, sometimes I fail to remember it.

8. Increased E-mails, advertisements

Many said to me, “you can unsubscribe from unwanted advertisements, subscriptions.” So I did them all — still lots of promotional ads filling my e-mail inbox. Less e-mail organizing skills also a reason behind this.

9. Delay in finishing works on time

As a working woman, I constantly strive to balance work and home. Although I have managed all the responsible jobs, I feel the delay in finishing some, only due to enjoying the smartphone.

10. when I leave the phone at home, I feel terrible stress, as if I left part of my body.

I have heard the same feeling many people had. I don’t use drugs or alcohol. But I think this feeling is more dangerous than them.

In addition to those listed above, there are some severe impacts that scientists have researched. They are as follows.

1. Narcissism

The narcissistic personality is a mental disorder that includes:

• Selfishness.
• Arrogant thinking and behavior.
• Lack of empathy.
• Concern for others.
• Excessive need for admiration.

2. Text Neck pain

Text neck pain can develop if we use a smartphone or any related devices while looking down for a long time with an unsupported neck posture. This will lead to more critical symptoms.

3. Increase in illness

According to a study in 2011 by researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, 1 in 6 smartphones has Fecal matter. So, the diseases will increase, but we don’t know that it is due to our smartphones. So, let us make sure there is no Fecal matter on our phones.

4. Increase in Accidents

It is primarily caused by hands-free phones, distractions, and inattention while driving.

5. Male infertility.

Researches say cell phone radiation may decrease sperm count, motility, and viability.

There are many articles over the internet explaining all indications in-depth with Science and mitigations of many. Read them and get to know them in-depth. I have listed out some in the reference section of this article.

Focus mode on

I followed a tip over the last two days, reduced my smartphone screening time by 3 hours. In addition, it increased my focus on works while switching on the smartphone.

As many people’s incomes nowadays depend on smartphones and Laptops, the technique to focus more on the work while switching on the smartphone would be helpful. So, I tried the setup of my Android smartphone, “Digital Wellbeing and Parental Control.”

Digital Wellbeing

The steps I followed to reduce my screen time are,

Step 1: I opened the ‘Setting’ app on my phone.

Step 2: Clicked on ‘Digital Wellbeing & parental controls’

Step 3: Scrolled down to ‘Focus mode’.

Step 4: Clicked ‘work time’ and choose the apps I need during work time. (When the selected Focus mode is enabled, I cannot use other apps or receive notifications from them).

Similarly, I set the ‘Me’ time and created a new mode called ‘Sleep,’ following the same steps again as above.

See how easy this is.

While using Focus mode, only the selected apps have shown in colors. Other apps are in pause mode and displayed in grayscale. As a result, I feel less distracted by my smartphone.

“App timers” and “Wind down”

In addition to the Focus mode, I came across “App timers” and “Wind down.”

Using “App timers,” I could set a timer for each application I use.

The “Wind down” setting is also used to increase the sleeping time by blocking notifications and charging the screen to grayscale.

The grayscale actually reduces the attraction of the smartphone.

Late is better than never.

I believe that I can continue to reduce the screen time using the “Focus mode.”

Now, we have various branded smartphones. Thus, I recommend you search in google by typing “Digital Wellbeing” control settings on your phone model. Moreover, some brands suggest using good free apps for this purpose. Hence, before going for Applications, try to find the smartphone settings.

I was able to find relevant settings for Android smartphones on Google and iPhones from their official website.

Yes. If you probably did not know this before, I hope that you will find the tip to focus on your work while keeping on smartphones after reading this article.

Although I am using a smartphone for over 5 years, I learned this tip a few days ago. Like me, many people don’t see this set up on their smartphones. Therefore, give it a try and see the impacts. Also, practice it regularly. If you find some other exciting and valuable settings on the smartphone, please share them with me. Again, I try. Let’s break the smartphone addiction together.

Thank you for reading

Useful References in addition to the mentioned links

1. Screen time survey reveals consumers spend 50 days a year on smartphones
2. Smartphone Addiction
3. Signs and Symptoms of Cell Phone Addiction
4. Is Your Smartphone Causing Your Neck Pain?
5. The Effects of Smartphones on Your Brain
6. The Effects of Smartphone Usage on the Brain
7. How Do Smartphones Impact Youth Mental Health?
8. Are our smartphones affecting our mental health?
9. Smartphones and Anxious Kids: Mental Health Issues and the Generation
10. Smartphone usage rises dramatically in 2020, users worried about mental health:: Vivo Study
11. Smartphones in mental health a critical review
12. Association between mobile phone use and neck pain in university students

This article originally published in Medium.com