Choosing the Appropriate Amount of Phone Time

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2 years ago

How much time did you spend yesterday on your phone?

The majority of us have no idea. Minutes pass while we text, peruse social media, and interact with addictive mobile apps. Smartphone usage has become so common that we no longer notice it.

It's hard to think that the first iPhone was released only 13 years ago. Smartphones have become an integral part of our daily lives, with people spending an estimated five hours each day on them. Thousands of times per day, an estimated 2.3 billion users touch their phones. The rate of change is quickening.

Excessive smartphone use in children and teens has been a source of concern for several medical professionals and parents. Among their concerns are:

Changes in brain chemistry (contributing to symptoms like depression and anxiety)
Real-life relationships have deteriorated in quality.
Shoulder hunches, "text neck," and other postural problems
Insomnia
Problems with self-esteem
Problems with vision

Some of these signs and symptoms are undoubtedly familiar to you. Adults, on the other hand, have been left out of the discourse while the health community has hurried to raise awareness and set standards for children and teens. We've been left to our own devices to find out how much time we should spend on our phones each day (no pun intended!).

Intentionality is a crucial component of safe smartphone usage.

Finding the appropriate balance between enjoying the benefits of technology without sacrificing your quality of life is one of the most difficult aspects of limiting your smartphone use.

It's not a simple binary choice like stopping smoking, where quitting is always better than continuing to smoke. Smartphones have numerous advantages, including connectivity, convenience, and novelty. Like so many other potential behavioral addictions, the poison is in the dose.

One of the first steps in determining how much phone time you need?

Distinguishing between reactive, autopilot behavior and deliberate use. We spend a major portion of our everyday phone time unconsciously. You've probably caught yourself pulling out your phone and unlocking your home screen, only to question why you did so. It's easy to get into a black hole of website hopping or social media browsing when you get blasted with dopamine hit after dopamine hit. It normally takes a long for us to realize what we've done, and we grossly underestimate the amount of time we've spent in the haze.

So, perhaps the question we should be asking isn't how can we reduce our smartphone usage. It's to question ourselves, "How can we swiftly and consistently bring awareness to unconscious activity?"

Time spent on a smartphone is not created equal. Hiring an Uber, keeping track of your calories, or scribbling down that business idea in Evernote are all examples of intentional applications. However, you can't say the same about your 20th round of Candy Crush this afternoon.

Do You Use Your Phone in a Way That Is Consistent With Your Core Values?

You're undoubtedly overworked and stressed. The majority of people are. If only we had more opportunities to go to the gym, see friends, or enroll in that art class. Work, sleep, and family duties, on the other hand, get in the way. There's never enough of anything...

So it appears.

With a 40-hour workweek, seven hours of sleep every night, plus a couple hours per day for personal care, you'll have roughly 58 hours per week to do everything else.

Keep in mind that we use our smartphones for an average of five hours per day. That's a huge 35 hours every week — nearly a full-time job!

Let's be honest: we may not be operating at optimal efficiency in the workplace. Let's say we spend half of our time on our smartphones during work hours, or 17.5 hours a week. That leaves us with 17.5 hours of valuable spare time on our phones.

What if you reduced your outside-of-work phone time by a quarter? That's an extra 4.5 hours per week to socialize, relax, or pursue whatever interests you.

Now is an excellent time to determine your essential values, if you haven't done so already. Finances, physical health, relationships, spirituality, and other artistic, creative, and humanitarian activities will be on many people's minds.

Have you noticed any discrepancies between your top values and how you spend your time? The majority of folks will. What appears to be an overburdening schedule often turns out to be a problem with prioritization. We lose count of all the minutes and seconds that our phones consume. When we don't make a conscious decision about how we spend our leisure time, addictive technology and ingrained habits make the decision for us.

Choosing the Appropriate Amount of Phone Time

We've already mentioned the lack of a clear, objective benchmark for how much time should be spent on a smartphone. However, with an average of five hours per day spent on our devices, there is still opportunity for improvement.

Is my phone time negatively affecting the quality of my life? This is one of the most powerful questions you can ask yourself.

An honest answer will help you decide whether a small cutback or a complete redesign is necessary. Your optimum phone time is likely to differ from that of a friend or partner. So much is dependent on your personal schedule and outside-of-work priorities.

Here are a few popular ways to think about:

Every weekend, set aside one day to leave your phone at home.
Remove all social networking apps from your phone.
Turn off push notifications.
Limit yourself to “fun” phone use only during certain hours of the day. Before you check your phone, say something like, “I'm going to look at my niece's baby pictures” or “I'm going to take a five-minute Facebook break.”
Set your phone's color mode to grayscale.
When you're not using your phone, put it in a different room (or at least out of reach).
a mixture of the preceding

Maintaining an open mind will assist you in determining what works, what doesn't, and how to make adjustments moving forward.

Tracking your daily or weekly smartphone usage is an important first step in regaining control of your time once you've decided on a daily or weekly quota. Silicon Valley behemoths have taken encouraging steps in developing screen time-management solutions to assist users in doing just that.

Developing Better Tech Relationships

Smartphones have a tendency to make us feel a little... stupid. How do we keep getting outwitted by our gadgets? Have we truly let our self-control to deteriorate?

No, not at all.

Those social media platforms and mobile apps that eat up so much of our time may appear to be easy, but they're the work of highly trained behavioral scientists.

To put it another way, they're made to keep you hooked.

We need practical techniques to raise awareness of compulsive behavior and safeguards for when our willpower wanes, rather than beating ourselves up for not having adequate self-control.

You should be aware of how much time you spend on your phone. Commitment to being more deliberate in your use and to aligning it with your basic values. You'll need these tools to stay on track. These ingredients will assist you in developing healthy smartphone habits, allowing you to take use of the best of technology without negatively impacting your life.