Does anyone else’s heart sink a bit around 9:00 a.m. on Sunday mornings when their screen time notification pops up?
Most of my friends have disabled this function because they don’t want to see it, but I keep it on as a little accountability reminder to put my phone down and touch some grass. While I’ve been able to keep my phone time well below the 3 hours and 43 minutes that is typical for Americans, I noticed my weekly reports slowly creeping up this past semester. With each update I got, I grew a bit more frustrated–it is my senior year, after all, and I want to enjoy every bit of it! I wasn’t frustrated enough, though, because there wasn’t much of a change by the following Sunday. I attributed most of my screen time problems to social media. While I have 15-minute daily app limits on Instagram and Snapchat, those tend to get ignored regularly. In a moment of impulse, I deleted them from my phone. My plan was to stay off them until I stopped thinking about them.
The first few days weren’t hard, per se, but I spent a decent amount of time opening my phone anyway, looking for something to do. I gravitated towards other apps to fill my time: scrolling Pinterest, Buzzfeed articles and even Facebook, an account I made in high school solely to advertise my babysitting services on my neighborhood’s group page. My screen time saw minimal improvements, and I didn’t feel better about myself.
I realized that I might need to intentionally fill my “screen time” with something, so my friend and I finally made the trip to the public library to stock up on reading material for the rest of the semester. Naturally, I had picked up four books in the first 10 minutes and was quite determined to (actually) read them. That night, after going out with some friends to celebrate the start of the weekend, I retreated home early to lie on the couch with some hot chocolate and opened my first book. That was two weeks ago, but I have stayed consistent with that routine, as I look forward to reading each night instead of losing myself on my phone.
With new strategies in hand, I set a new goal: no more social media until I could get my phone time down to a weekly average of an hour and a half per day. Facebook joined the “prohibited app” category, but I kept Pinterest to support my crafting and cooking needs (some healthy non-phone hobbies, I may add). This was a pretty significant drop from my previous use, but I was determined to reach it,
I didn’t expect to meet that goal my first week of trying, but I was pleasantly surprised with my ability to exceed that goal pretty quickly: my average was an hour and ten minutes, with most days being under an hour (a long day of GPS mapping on a city day in Chicago bumped it way up one day). This was over Thanksgiving break, and I was glad to know I was spending quality time with my friends and family instead of tapping through “thankful” posts and stories of mild acquaintances. Week two was a little bit harder, as I spent the weekend flying and staying at a hotel alone, so I had to entertain myself in other ways (all credit goes to Emily Henry’s “Happy Place” and my lovely 15-page sustainability report for passing the time).
As I am writing this, I have just completed my second successful week of reduced screen time–1 hour and 1 minute! Having met my “requirements,” I may be redownloading some things soon. I have missed using Snapchat as a form of casual communication with my closest friends, so I will probably start up with that soon, but I have no desire to see what’s happening on Instagram. The couple of times I’ve wanted to use it, like to see what events are going on around campus or look up new restaurants in St. Louis, haven’t proven themselves worth it quite yet.
Many people have developed unhealthy habits when it comes to social media. After several weeks of clearing that from my life, I have only positive things to say about this experience. I would recommend it to anyone–even if you’ve developed a healthy relationship with social media (because if you have, this will be super easy). By minimizing my phone usage, I found my working time to be more productive, and my downtime to be more restful. If you want to enter the holiday season and the new year on a refreshed and positive note, a social media detox might do the trick.