This week, from February 2nd to February 8th, I averaged 8 hours and 21 minutes of screen time per day. This means that out of the 168 hours of the week, I spent 58.45 hours scrolling aimlessly, almost 3 days of uninterrupted screen time. I know I’m not alone in this realization. Ever since the first release of the iPhone, in 2007, phones have been a vastly growing part of everyday life. The question is, when did it become our entire life? While on the seemingly never ending journey to find the answer, it’s important to learn how to have less of a dependency on the tiny black rectangle that we can’t live without.
The first step is challenging, as many of us have never grown up during a time where the phone wasn’t a thing. This first step is to give yourself restrictions, times you can’t go on your phone and restrictions for the hours you can be on certain apps. It’s easy to get lost for hours on end scrolling on random apps, and before you know it, it’s 1 A.M. on a school night and you have to wake up in 5 hours for a 7 hour school day, which is inherently shorter than the time you spent on your phone that day. This is why restrictions are good, if not vital, as they assist in balancing technology that hasn’t been around long enough for people to get tired of it. It’s just the right amount of new that excitement still buzzes around it, but just the right amount of old that there’s so much of it. All together, the unfortunate fact is that your phone is the easiest drug to get addicted to, so like any drug it needs guidelines.
The second step is slightly easier: you must ask yourself, what exactly is it that I do on my phone? Whether you find yourself on social media, online shopping, or sitting on the phone with a friend, everything you seek online can transfer to your real life. The underlying truth is that our phone is just a shortcut to real life. Rather than hanging out with your best friend, it’s easier to click on the FaceTime app. In the end, the times you remember are those spent in the moment, not on a screen. Similarly, scrolling on social media looking at other people’s lives is no help to yours. Go out there, and make your own moments.