Do you want to break up with your phone in 30-days
According to Catherine Price, a science journalist and author and her essays have appeared in The Best American Science Writing, The New York Times and Popular Science, we have fallen headlong into our relationship with phones without taking time to think about our behaviour. So before doing ourselves more damage, we should follow a 30-day programme of “taking time to stop and think about what is working and what’s not”. The average UK adult checks their phone at least 33 times a day, which amounts to 30 full days a year, quite often within five minutes of waking up or during sex. Price found her experience with the phone made her attention span shorter and her memory weaker.
“How to Break Up With Your Phone”, is packed with tested and tried strategies and practical tips, and is an essential read for everyone who owns a smartphone. Do you frequently pick it up “just to check” only to look up forty-five minutes later wondering where the time has gone? Do you always wanted to spend less time on your phone but don’t know how to do so without giving it up completely.
Price says phones can make us feel bust but ineffective, connected but lonely, free to look at the world but tethered to a device”.
You’ll, however, discover how phones and apps are designed to be addictive and learn how the time we spend on them damages our abilities to focus, think deeply, and form new memories. You’ll have to make customised changes to your phone settings, apps, environment and mindset that will ultimately enable you to take up that vital control of your life, rather than the phone controlling you.
One of the first things Price suggests doing is setting boundaries and becoming more aware of how often you use your phone, by downloading apps that monitor when and how long you spend on your mobile and ultimately become conscious of the things that trigger your phone use, and thereby reduce your total phone time use.
One of the easiest areas to ban your phone is in your bedroom which studies show can improve your sleep. Worried about waking up on time, just remember people did wake up on time even before smartphone became part of our life, by investing in an alarm clock.
One of the other big temptations to use the phone is to get a like or appreciation from one of our various social media apps, and you could overcome this by turning off your notifications completely or keeping your phone on silent or airplane mode.
A father from the UK, took his teenage son to teach him the value of life to a remote place in Manos, Brazil, where there was no electricity, no smartphones and no Television for several hours to detox him from computers, smartphones and Tv.
How to Break Up With Your Phone by Catherine Price, Trapeze £12.99