Sometimes, you desperately need to switch off. Here's why - in the digital age there's this ever-growing pressure to be always on, always inspiring, always going, always pushing...Honestly, it's a soul-sucking vortex and it can destroy your health (hello burnout), your creativity and your relationships. Yes, Hana is super passionate about what she does but her soul just craves downtime.
With the words of the wonderful Marie Forleo, author of the New York Times bestseller Everything is figureoutable: ''Great things happen when you unplug from technology and plug into your real life. If you're constantly listening to the noise of the world, it's impossible to hear the whispers of your soul.''
So Hana decided to break up with her phone. Here's what she has learned.
According to statistics, in 2022, the average time spent on social media was 147 minutes. And that's just an average. Many people spend more time liking, commenting and sharing stories than eating, drinking, shopping and real-world socializing. In a lifetime that means spending 6 years and 8 months using social media. Ouch!
She is from a generation remembering times before mobile phones. We were out a lot. She remembers her parents checking all the pubs in town because we didn't specify the name of the pub we went to. We didn't have a phone so we were supposed to get home on time. Or not. And summers were even better. We went to outdoor festivals, and concerts and earned money as camp instructors. Now, the whole generation spends most of the summer hanging out alone in their room with their phone. As one girl in the somewhat sad article with the title. How smartphones destroyed a generation said: “We didn’t have a choice to know any life without iPads or iPhones. She thinks we like our phones more than we like actual people.”
This dramatic change from one generation to another leads not only to so-called texting thumb, text neck or mobile phone elbow, but can have a major impact on mental health. Depression, suicide (mostly among girls), body image issues, relationship issues (when the interaction around the dinner table dies off because everyone has their mobile phone handy), and sleep issues - what we see is a major mental health crisis.
Social media companies don't normally release information about how much time people spend on their platforms but studies show that Facebook is the leader on the market with 58 minutes spent on its platform, followed by YouTube, TikTok and Instagram.
She is an average social media user - she has a tracker on her phone and before going on a social media detox she spends 142 minutes daily on social media platforms. Just the first day of the detox, the time on SM decreased by one hour. One hour! The phone stops being so appealing when you delete the social media icons, not to mention putting her phone on grey mode after 8 pm (which she definitely recommend).
The first days were the most difficult. Especially in the morning, when she instinctively grabbed her phone to check Instagram, Telegram and Facebook but heck! She deleted the apps and there were no urgent messages to reply to. She still used her phone to make videos for her courses on Udemy, for Zoom calls, she listened to audiobooks, took pictures and read books but I've never used her phone more than half an hour per day and she didn't even bother to take it out of her bag on a weekend camping trip.
Sounds too good to be true? What helped her tremendously was the book How to break up with your phone by Catherine Price. This book is a must for all those of us who went a bit overboard with phone usage. Here are my tips for JOMO (joy of missing out):
Tips:
Unfollow and Unsubscribe: Of course she wants you to follow her but please do so only if you love her posts. Otherwise, unfollow. And unsubscribe from every e-mail list you no longer want to see in your Inbox. You will not lose followers (she didn't)
Switch off all notifications. Don't post during the weekend. Spend weekends with your family and friends, face to face. Prioritize real socializing instead of social media. No phones on the dinner table or in the bedroom period.
Go to settings, time tracker, to see where you spend the most time while being on your phone. Create before you consume. Put your phone on grey mode after 8 pm (it will become so boring you won't even bother watching cat videos).
Explain to your kids that the brains of Silicon Valley, the Apple founder included, did not allow his kids to have a phone. She guess they knew why. Have a plan. It's easier to forget about your phone when you're doing some interesting activity. Back to you - which one tip from the above can you start implementing right now? Let her know!