In this society, it is pretty difficult not to use our phones, due to the fact that we don’t use them only for entertainment, but also for socializations or studying. However, using our phones every moment we have time to check if we got messages or doomscrolling is considered to be an addiction. Phone addictions lead to various consequences, other than stealing our time. Therefore, in this article, I would like to explain the effects of phone addiction, and share some tips to quit being addicted to it.
Consequences of phone addiction
If you are addicted to using your phone, you have various consequences from it. Watching some contents and mindlessly doomscrolling short videos every day will release your dopamine constantly. The excessive release of dopamine will make you addicted to your phone. Therefore, when you want to work or study, you will get distracted easily and cannot focus for long periods of time, as you are used to watching short videos and you get brain fatigue from gaining numerous amounts of information from those contents every single day. Furthermore, watching at blue light for a long time will worsen your eye strain and vision, as well as confuse your body clock. Then, you may get sleep disorders and cannot get a rest completely from your sleep. Therefore, phone addiction only has a vicious circle that will affect your health and work performance.
Tips to quit phone addiction
Make your screen monochrome
Setting the screen to monochrome helps to reduce visual attractiveness towards the contents on our phones. In fact, colors have massive effects towards us, and are even used for marketing strategy. For example, blue colors stimulate calming, reducing stress and productivity, while red colors stimulate excitement, adrenaline, and increase heart rate. When we use our phone, whether doomscrolling on social media or watching some content, colorful colors attract our attention and lead to phone addiction. Therefore, turning our phones monochrome will help make contents less visually stimulating, allowing you to lower your dependence on constant use of digital devices.
Put your phone away from your eyes
When you put your phone near you while you work or study, you can easily get distracted by wanting to check your phone or notifications you receive. In fact, one of the core problems of phone addiction is the environment where immediate availability of our phones is provided. Therefore, in order to escape from it, the simple solution is to put your phone far away from you, whether putting it in the next room or somewhere difficult to access. This will reduce visual cues and triggers that make you want to check your phone compulsively and start mindless scrolling again to wait your time. Sometimes you work outside your house and may not be able to put your phone far away from you. In that case, you can turn off your phone to get any notifications and put it in your bag. This way, you can reduce the distractions from the existence of the phone itself.
Find hobby that does not require phones
These days, you are able to enjoy various activities with your phone, such as playing games, watching Netflix, and posting on social media…etc. Even though those activities are fun, they may make your phone addiction worse. Therefore, in order to reduce the time spent using your phone, you should find a hobby other than using your phone. Various types of analogue hobbies exist, such as reading books, going to the gym, hanging out with friends outside, drawing, making sweets, gardening… and many others. Since we can do entertaining activities on our phones, we may forget that there are various fun activities other than using our phones. Therefore, I would like to recommend you to explore various analogue hobbies that entertain you.
Install an app that restricts phone usage
In order to overcome our phone addiction, app companies have produced apps to reduce our time to using phones. For example, an app that is called “Detox” will set the upper limit of time that you can use your phone. This app is effective as you can only use your phone for the time you aim for, and you can know how much time is left until the time limit. This way, you can understand how much time you usually spend on the exact app. Furthermore, an app that is called “Forest” allows you to grow a plant during the time you don’t use your phone. Quitting your phone may be simple torture, but if you have a purpose like to grow a plant, you may get motivated to see the result after enduring the time not to use your phone.
Conclusion
In this article, I explained the negative consequences of being addicted to using the phone and introduced several tips to overcome phone addiction. Of course, you may find it difficult to stop phone addiction even by doing the tips I introduced. However, the most important point to work on quitting phone addiction is consistency and patience. Therefore, I would like to tell you that even if you fail to quit several times, do not worry, you can overcome addiction for sure by making an effort seriously and consistently. I hope the tips I explained help, and let’s be productive by quitting phone addiction!