Do you know how much time you spend using your smartphone?
In the past decade, smartphones become am status item to an indispensable part of our everyday life. We spent most of our time using smartphone. We spent 4 hours a day on an average.
There is an increasing body of research that shows smartphones can interfere with our sleep, productivity, impulse control and mental health. Even having a smartphone within reach can reduce available cognitive capacity. But we should be more concerned with the potential for smartphones to shorten our lives by chronically raising the level of cortisol (one of the body's main stress hormone).
The cortisol is mislabelled as the primary "fight or flight" hormone that springs us into action when we are facing a threat. It is produced when we are under stress. It's role is to keep our body on high alert by increasing our blood sugar levels and surpressing our immune system. This serves us well when dealing with an immediate physical threat that resolves quickly.
Many people say that theu feel more stressed now than before they had a smartphone. Smartphones actually play in elevating the level of our cortisol throught out the day.
Digital Stress
We may not be notice but using our smartphone was a contribution of stressed especially when browsing the different social medias. We often see articles, news and post that quite disturbing, the toxicity of some people that makes us stress.
Social medias makes us feel tethered to our social networks exposing us to conflict, cyberbullying, and fostering us to social comparison and the fear of missing out.
The stress we feel in using the social medias can caused us to do things we shouldn't do and we shouldn't feel. It can also awakens our emotions like envy and jealousy.
I remember, yesterday as I was browsing videos in youtube, one video clip get my attention. In that video clip, a girl used her friends photo in her social media account to attract boys and likes. When she was asked why she do that, she didn't answer.
That act may caused by feeling of missing out, that awakens her envy and jealousy. She maybe wanted the attention that her friend was experiencing, more likes and boys.
Digital Nutrition
Have you ever tried not using your smartphone within a day or two? If yes, what do you feel about not using it? If you haven't tried it yet, why not try and discover your feelings and emotions when not using it.
There is unofficial condition called nomophobia or "no-mobile phone phobia". Is used to describe a psychological condition when people have a fear of being detached from mobile phone connectivity. This condition also shown to increase the cortisol.
Here are some tips for maintaining healthier smartphone used:
Take off all the unimportant app notifications so you can take control on when to look at your phone. You can also allocate certain time to be a notification-free.
Take some time to complete a digital declutter. Unfollow people or pages and unsubscribing from email list that can cause stress or you do not get any benefits.
Set a digital curfew to support better restoration sleep. Don't keep or put your phone within your reach. Intead of reaching your phone first thing in the morning, start your day with some exercise and meditation.
Be mindful and cautious how often you pick your phone. Instead bombarding your mind with information, use your time to clear your mind with some breathing exercise.
Maintaining a healthier relationship with our smartphones where we are more mindful and intentional of what we consume digitally. We can maximize the benefits and minimize the stress they bring to our lives.
Thanks for reading!
Amazing