7 Keys to Help Overcome Your Phone Addiction
The Lord has been dealing with me about my own digital habits for some time. I have felt cautioned by the Lord from time to time to make sure that I wasn’t being controlled by my phone or iPad. At the end of last year I felt strongly impressed to do away with distractions and specifically get out of the habit of allowing my phone to control my time. Here are seven things that I’m doing right now that our helping me to overcome my phone dependency. (These things definitely work. I’m down 65% on my phone screen time in the first two weeks this year).
1) Don’t look at your phone in the morning until you have gotten out of bed, dressed, and prepared for your day. Optimally don’t check your phone until you have had an eye-to-eye human interaction. I have found that this sets the pace for my day and instead of my phone being my go to, the Lord gets my first thoughts and focus.
2) Turn off all notifications (Badges, Sounds, Vibrations) I did this several years ago and it bore immediate results. Once you turn off the notification you have to employ discipline to not check your phone constantly, thinking you might have received a message. Once you turn off the notifications, then you have to do #3 in order to be effective.
3) Only check messages and emails at set times throughout the day. I’m currently checking and returning all my messages twice a day. This has made a huge difference for me. I’m way more efficient and focused the rest of the day. I’m able to be concise in the way I handle messages when I do return them. I do allow myself some leniency for text “convos” when I’m outside of my work environment, in the evening, or on the weekends.
4) Don’t take your phone to the bathroom. Just don’t.
5) Don’t keep your phone physically on you, set it aside, in another room if necessary. This is hugely important. The more contact you have with your phone the more tempting it is to mindlessly open it and start tapping. Set it down and don’t mess with it until your scheduled times. (I know some people’s business is dynamically connected to answering the phone. Using a single wireless ear bud may be a good answer to disconnecting you from the feeling of needing to constantly access your phone)
6) Get rid of your Apple Watch. I owned an Apple Watch for about a year. It was easily the most distracted I’ve ever been from a digital device. I remember when Apple first began to market the Apple Watch they called it the most “personal” device they’d ever made. I think what they meant was that it was the most personally invasive device they’d ever made. First I turned off the notifications and then just got rid of it altogether. It was an excellent choice for my digital health.
7) When you use your phone, even if it’s to play a game, make sure you’re using it as an intentional choice and not something you’re doing absent mindedly. I think unintentional checking, scrolling, tapping, and browsing is a pretty sure sign of a digital addiction. Discipline yourself to use your phone as a result of an intentional choice. You will find that there is a gap between how much you want to use your phone and how much you need to use your phone. Choosing not to use it when you feel like using it will help break your dependence on it.
We don’t really know the effects that will surface later in life on an entire generation that has had a dependency on digital devices. We do know that things like auto-play, haptics, notifications, likes, and red badges were all designed to elicit a psychological response in order to create more dependency and use. The dopamine response to digital engagement has been widely documented.
I’ve felt for some time that digital dependence creates despondency, distraction, and anxiety in people. But even greater than that, if my digital life impacts my relationship with the Lord my digital life needs to change. And by God’s grace it is changing. I hope this is helpful for you. I encourage you to ask the Holy Spirit if you need to employ some of the above measures to help you get disconnected from your phone or other digital device. And then lean into the grace of God to get clear of this dependency.