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Digital Scaries - How I manage and limit screen time.

 I know as well as anyone how real the "doom scroll" is. You sit down, open up social media, and suddenly it's many hours later and you haven't moved. I do love social media and am a big advocate for using it for good and for connections. All that jazz is great. However, our minds are not designed to absorb so much screen time. Also, viewing the world through someone else's lens rather than experiencing it is unhealthy. You become prone to comparing yourself to others' unrealistic lives and to dissociating from the life you are or could be living. Recently, I have been intentionally working on reducing my screen time overall and being more intentional about the time I spend on my phone. Here are some of the things I am doing to be successful at this:

  • On iPhones, you can set Screen Time limits in your settings by apps. I spend most of my time on Instagram and Facebook. I set a one-hour limit for both of those limits combined. However, the limit alone was not enough for me because I could just override the alert when my time on those apps was finished. My solution for this was to put a password on the override and have my boyfriend set the password to one that I don't know. Now, I cannot override and go over my time limit even if I want to. 
  • I also have an app on my phone called Flora. (Another app like this is called Forest.) You plant seeds on the app and set timers. Over the time of the timer, the seed grows into a tree. If you exit the app during the timer's duration, your tree dies. You can set breaks in between timed sessions to help you adopt healthy habits for getting work done. It's just a more fun way to incentivize yourself to be off your phone. It's a good way of tricking yourself if you have a hard time with self-control on your phone. 
  • Adopt a new hobby. It's easy to spend lots of time on our phones if we have the time to spend. To side-track this, I got into using hobbies like watercolors, reading, and working out. If we fill up more of our days, we will naturally spend less time scrolling
  • The last tip I have is to sleep with your phone away from you, either across the room or out of your bedroom completely. It will help you have better sleep because it prevents you from falling asleep while on your phone and getting on it first thing when you wake up. Starting your day out right, like I've discussed before, is really important and probably shouldn't be started with a "doom scroll."
Will you use these tips? What tips do you have for reducing screen time?

Comments

  1. All of these tips are the best! This past weekend I went on a retreat where we camped out in a cabin in the woods. We decided to have everyone put their phones away for the weekend. For some of the retreatants, this idea made them not so happy. How were they going to destress from the day without their phones? Well, after just the first day, they were begging to never see their phones again. They were talking about being able to really be present with people around them and how much better they were able to focus. Our phones are tools that we generally overuse for pleasures sake. I feel like we should all get disconnected every once and a while!

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  2. That Flora app is actually a super cool concept! I love that you point out that watching someone else's life through a screen is unhealthy, because I can very much relate to that. I would often watch fitness influencers, who expanded their content into vlogs, and after a couple months I thought to myself "Why do I care so much about this person's day to day life?" That was the switch for me. I like to imagine that people are watching my life, and I don't think they'd be entertained if all I'm doing is sitting in my bed scrolling on social media.

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  3. I love these tips they are so handy. I tend to spend too much time on my phone but I try to limit my screen time by turning it off completely or putting my phone on do not disturb. the app Flora you mentioned sounds super cool and I might try it sometime. Thanks for sharing!

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  4. This is exactly why I deleted TikTok. I would spend hours on it. I spend a lot of time on Instagram and Facebook reels. I know lots of people who set time limits on apps, I just can't get myself to do it because my dad is always sending me stupid cat videos or recipes on Instagram and I always watch the recipe ones. These are all great tips. The last one is the BEST one. I used to have a "Drop zone" where the phones and electronics were placed in the kitchen when we were kids BUT I always have my phone on me in case of a family emergency.

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