Like most people, technology is something I use every day for many tasks. This can be from homework to playing video games in my down time, even talking with family's and friends. Over the months I have taken this class, I only really started to realize just how much time I actually end up spending on my devices. At the start of this semester, I never thought it to be much of a problem, my main excuse being "most people I know are on their laptops or phones a lot of the day, so it's normal." But just because it was normal, does not mean that it was healthy. I ended up finding out that I had a bit of a problem of being on my devices a bit too often. This is post is my story about coming over it.
During one of our class periods, we were asked to find out how much time we spend on our phones alone. some people had very low numbers, it being about 3-5 hours a day. other had higher, around 13. Mine was in the upper category, averaging around 8-10 hours a day. Until that point, I never realized how often I was on my phone. I never realized that at times, I would say to my self time and time again "just one more YouTube video." only to end up spending another 3 hours watching nothing of importance in the dead of night. At this point is when I decided to actively make it of decent priority to slowly lower my intake of technology.
Taking away the 2 hours a day I would be listening to music, I had 7-8 hours a day that I decided I wanted to lower to 5 within a month. Keeping track of this mainly by battery life and alarms set around the time I should be sleeping.
Originally, I tried staying off my phone cold turkey. I handled that well for about 2 days before I found myself on my bed, again, laying awake at 3am watching videos about video games and who knows what else. I tried again, this time lasting all of about 7 hours before the same thing repeated itself. I decided that I would do a little research about how to stop. This page gave me three ways to help me do just that. Then I found a 4th way, which is the same method I actually used to help stop drinking soda, that being to replace that time with doing something else. For the soda, I replaced it over time with Gatorade/Powerade, juices or tea. With my phone, I decided if I ever had the need to go on it again if it wasn't "scrolling time," I would do a few pushups and study for an upcoming test. Or maybe if I wasn't in the mood for studying, I would go and hang out with some friends or read. This was the method that I found most effective.
I ended up hitting my goal around April, after getting an alert saying my screen time went down by some percent. Tapping that notification brought me to my settings, detailing that I was at 4 hours and 23 minutes average this past week. Likely the lowest it has ever been. Seeing the success this has brought, I wanted to see how much time I could bring it down to. I ended up going down to a low of just under 3 hours. It has been a bit difficult to maintain this, using my phone for really only the necessary stuff, like communication with my family or having to watch a long YouTube video for class, but it was really nice to see those numbers go down.
Throughout this process, I have also seen my grades go up as a result of replacing my time on my phone with studying or getting work done for classes, along with going to the gym to get me physically healthy. My mind feels more clear and I just feel happier as every day passes.
My eyes used to hurt so often due to my phone being only half a foot away from my face for a whopping 8 hours a day. Some times when I don't use my glasses for those cases, my vision is all kinds of messed up for hours after, sometimes even the next day. Now that all those problems have mostly faded, I feel this weight off my shoulders.
This blog is not here to say that all technology is bad, but it is saying that you, as a reader and user of technology, should be more aware of your use of it and limit it. Set aside times for when it should be used for recreational purposes.
