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?