Managing my phone and social media

One of the things I have been trying out this year is taking regular breaks from my phone and from social media. I do not want to be legalistic about it, to create a series of hard and fast rules that I have to follow, or else. That is not inspiring, and not helpful. I am trying to get out of the shackles I feel my phone and social media have put upon me, not take up new chains.

Instead, I have some guidelines I have been using so that my day no longer revolves around my phone and what I find on it; so that my phone goes back to being a tool for my use, and not the other way around. All of this is touch and go. I am constantly assessing how my personal guidelines are working for me, tweaking where it is needed. So, what are some of the steps I have adopted?

1. Keeping my phone out of my bedroom at night. 

 My phone charges overnight on the bathroom counter. It is much harder to get sucked into the vortex that is Instagram's suggested stories and posts page at 2:30am if my phone is an entirely different room. In grad school I bought myself a a little digital battery-powered alarm clock from Target, and this thing is worth way more than the six dollars I paid for it. So, no phone alarms for me, and my phone is relegated to the bathroom at night. 

2. Actually turning my phone off at night. 

I do not have a set time for this. Lately I have been turning it off around 7:45pm, because I do not want to spend all evening scrolling, staring at my tiny phone screen. Plus it helps me avoid the circle of scrolling and being kept up by my phone as it gets later and later. Realistically, there is nothing I *need* to be doing on my phone at that time. Work emails can wait until the morning. Or if I am staying up to write a report for work, I can just access Outlook and respond to said work emails on my laptop. No need to pull out my phone for that. I do not need to be calling or texting anyone (for the most part) after dinner. Conversations can be held the next day. If I think of something really important that I do not want to forget, I can write a little note to myself to text about it the next day. Or if it is REALLY important I can always turn back on my phone. Inconvenient maybe, but then it means I have to make sure what I am texting or calling about is truly important. If there is an emergency and another person needs to get a hold of me, there are multiple people in the house they can contact whose phones are on. And the only person I maybe see this happening with is my brother who lives in Tennessee... pretty sure he will be calling the parents before me if there is an emergency, regardless. 

3. Waiting to turn on my phone in the morning.

Rather than letting my phone screen be the first thing my bleary eyes see, I wait to turn on my phone until I few basic morning chores have been completed. As previously mention, I have my little digital battery-powered alarm clock from Target. Yes, I have to do my daily health check in for work. But I realized it does not make a difference if I do it right when I wake up, or 45 minutes later. They do not care, I just have to do it at some point in the day. My work emails can wait. Getting up and accomplishing a few things like making my bed, changing the water in the cat water bowls upstairs, sweeping downstairs, and doing my daily Scripture reading are things I need to do anyway. Now I get the reward of turning on my phone once I have done these tasks. It is a good motivation to get them done promptly instead of getting distracted. When I turn on my phone and am ready to connect with the world at large, I have already gotten some basic chores done. If I end up doom scrolling, well, at least I covered the basics. 

4. I enabled ActionDash. 

I have an Android phone, so if you are an iPhone user, there is a different app. ActionDash is both incredibly useful and sobering. You can set time limits for yourself on all the apps on your phone (e.g. a daily limit of 45 minutes for Instagram). You can "pause" an app for the rest of the day. It has handy little charts that show you what your most used app is that day, how many minutes you spent on each app, and how many times you unlocked your phone. And it gives you a weekly view too, so you can compare your daily usage. This is my review of the app on the Google Play store: Favorite app on my phone by FAR. Although it was definitely jarring at first. I use Instagram how much?! I unlock my phone how many times a day?! Yikes!! The pausing feature is super helpful when you need to focus and get off an app, but you don't want to go through the rigmarole of deleting it off your phone and downloading it again later. I love being able to schedule time limits for myself on various apps. I'm not against using my phone, or spending time on things like Instagram, but I also don't want to spend eight hours a day on it... and if I'm honest, sometimes it is really easy to accidentally do just that. All those times you open Instagram and scroll because you're bored add up. ActionDash has helped me be more purposeful with the time I'm spending on my phone. I'm better able to focus and get my non-phone work done when I need to, and I'm better able to enjoy the fun apps when I want to. I'm not feeling oversaturated on apps like Instagram because I've been scrolling through it every time I'm bored; now my time on apps like Instagram has a much greater purpose, and is more fun! 

5. I say no to socials one day a week.

Now, my pick of Sunday as a no social media day is purposeful, and it works for me on multiple levels. But really the idea is just to be off of social media one day a week. Your day could be Monday, Friday, Saturday. I chose Sunday because this dovetails nicely with a goal of mine to be more focused on religious things on Sunday anyway. An important piece to cutting out socials is to have something to fill that time with. Otherwise you create a vacuum. So on Sundays I have plans to do things like read, update my goals progress, practice piano, play board games with my siblings, craft, take an extra-long walk with the dog, etc. 

6. I keep my phone entirely turned off one day a week. 

This is a new thing I have been trialing since mid-March, and I do not implement it perfectly. For example, if I have plans to meet up with friends to grab coffee and walk in the park Sunday morning, I am going to turn on my phone. Obviously I need to be able to reach them, so we can check in and coordinate things. However, I have found that it makes it easier to effectively implement #5 if my phone is not even on. I can manage a dog walk without listening to an audiobook, although truthfully it is an adjustment. If I need to keep the time, well, I do have an analog wristwatch I wear every day. Might as well actually *use* it. Do I miss my work daily health check because of this? Yes, and this was what I struggled the most with. I could change my check in to being through email rather than text, for one thing. However, I realized talking to my coworkers that I am pretty much the only person religiously answering those five questions every morning. The system will not explode (or implode) if I do not fill out the questionnaire on Sundays. 

7. Keep off of socials for an entire week once a month. 

This one is also new as of mid-March, but I so appreciated what my first attempt at a week of no socials was like that I promptly decided this was something I needed to do on a monthly basis. I have decided to keep my schedule simple that my "week off" will be the first seven days of every month. This means I can be mindless and automate this system. I like not having to think about things. You can accomplish more that way. Again, I make sure I have other activities to fill this time. It also helps to have a buddy!

There are some other social media/phone usage/internet usage ideas that have been bouncing around my brain that I have not fleshed out yet or attempted to implement. One such idea is having "office hours" for my book Instagram account. Or having set days that I post (say, M-W-F). I am pretty active on my book Instagram account and am part of many reading groups and book clubs there, so it is very easy for me to accidently spend hours and hours on the app. Again, this is not to be legalistic about my phone and social media usage, but to free me to focus on other things, not just the nebulous world of the internet. 

Now, part of me is rolling my eyes at myself--Alicia, why did you go and start a blog if you are trying to lessen the amount of time you spend on socials/your phone/the internet? I dunno, I like to make things tricky for myself? It is too hard to actually leave? I am clearly a millennial and would like the attention all on me, thankyouverymuch? This space is something that I am going to employ for now, but we will see. I very easily may decide that this blog is silly or not a good use of my time and shut it down. But for now I appreciate having a space to write out my thoughts, and in a medium that is not your typical pen/paper journal. Perhaps some other like-minded (or dissenting!) individuals will stumble upon it and we can have a a good discussion. 

How do you feel about your phone and social media usage? Is it something you want to change?