TV 2!!!
Ate lunch outside in the beautiful weather and went for a mile 20min walk after lunch instead of scrolling.
Look at these views!
7 Likes
TV: spent the first hour of my morning reading a physical book
5 Likes
Okay, here’s my digital dilemma:
I spend way too much time on my phone, and I feel too attached to it. I would love to get to the point where I can leave the damn thing at home by accident and be just fine. I do, however, have so many social connections that are facilitated through it that it feels impossible to get rid of.
During lockdown my attachment definitely got worse, like many folks I know. I was on tiktok at the time which, while it helped with some things, gave me massive amounts of anxiety. The app is still on my phone, and I check in maybe once a month on a couple of friends, and do a voice update once a year.
I am absolutely someone who scrolls before bed.
My plan:
When I really need to sit down and focus on something (work, school, etc.), I move my phone to the other room or I use the Forest app and “Do Not Disturb” mode to track my time and reduce distraction.
During the school year I’ve been setting a loose bedtime and charging my phone across the bedroom from me, forcing me to not have it in hand when I go to bed. I also use a sunlight alarm clock which makes it easier for me to wake up in the morning, and then getting out of bed to shut off my phone alarm reinforces the “I AM UP NOW” mode.
Even during casual use I will liberally use the “pause” option on many social apps if I don’t want to deal with notifications from them in that moment (or “mute” specific chats in Signal).
5 Likes
There used to be a way to turn it on and off easily, by triple-tapping the home button, but now there’s no home button!
I had not heard of this; it seems useful!
1 Like
so one of the things that’s hardest for me to admit is that I listen to audio on my phone, via headphones, to fall asleep most nights. They are not bluetooth so my phone is next to me all night. I usually sleep pretty well, but that means my phone is not charging overnight. I love this strategy tho and it used to work for me
3 Likes
oh, that definitely makes things trickier!
My spouse got a sleep headband with Bluetooth headphones in it - he used to use wired headphones but his ears would hurt a bit in the morning. Would that be of use to you? Comfy, stays on, no need to have phone right next to you.
5 Likes
I’ll look into it–thanks!
3 Likes
mine does this too. he refers to it as his “sexy sexy headband,” and cannot sleep without it.
8 Likes
Yeah, mine absolutely needs noise in his ears to fall asleep.
3 Likes
My vice with my phone right now that I don’t get much out of is shorts/reels. I deleted tiktok forever ago but still scroll Facebook reels and YouTube shorts for hours.
I wish I had a good way of blocking JUST this portion of apps. I use Facebook for a few useful purposes and I still want to be able to go listen to a music video or look for specific topic content on YouTube. But the random infinite scroll short videos need to stop because they feel bad but I’m addicted.
7 Likes
re: Facebook, are you using the app or the mobile browser?
The app, but I could use the browser if that made the blocking doable?
1 Like
using the mobile site makes it more difficult/clunky to scroll endlessly and get sucked into those features.
2 Likes
In the past I have used the website and navigated to it with bookmarks for the parts of the site I actually use.
The mobile site was so clunky then that I ended up on the app again when I couldn’t post a time sensitive message once but the site looks a lot better now so I might try it again.
Avoiding the main feed is the goal for me.
1 Like
There is also https://mbasic.facebook.com/ which I believe has no reels or they aren’t immediately obvious.
3 Likes
I have not been posting on this thread much, which I feel bad about, considering I started it. But I have kind of come to the realization that phone use is not really what I’m hung up on; I’m mostly hung up on giving my kid a real childhood (whatever that means), with embodied play and time to explore and be herself without basically growing up on Instagram. And that’s a looooong road that I’ve only just started on, considering that she’s not even 2.
So, I’m not sure where that leaves me. Lately I’ve also been trying to drink less and watch less TV (bingeing streaming shows) so I think the phone use question is in that same vein of self-improvement things I am working on.
11 Likes
But to share one thing I’ve done that has helped me: one of my main “scrolling” culprits is Substack. I don’t have other social media and I don’t read OMD on my phone, so I set a 15-minute time limit per day for the app. If i’m truly interested in what I’m reading and the timer goes off, I’ll extend/ignore it, but more often if I’m just scrolling, I’m more than happy to just stop when the timer goes off.
10 Likes