Unplugged- Carly Wheeler

unplugged

“Carly, are you serious? There’s no way you’re going to make it a full week.”

Well Mom, I did it. I successfully completed a week-long phone detox. Now that I am past the TikTok withdrawals and the time spent wondering how many people’s snapchats I was leaving on delivered, I can easily say that logging off of my most used apps for the week was the best decision I have made for myself in a long time.

When Apple introduced the S c r e e n by Carly Wheeler

Time feature in settings as part of iOS 12 in late 2018, I was immediately startled by how much time I had been spending on my phone each day. It got me thinking: how do I even have five, six, seven hours in the day to be texting and scrolling through social media? I wasn’t the only one concerned about the amount of time I spend on my phone.

“I’ve been using [the Screen Time feature] and I have to tell you: I thought I was fairly disciplined about this. And I was wrong,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook in an interview with CNN. “When I began to get the data, I found I was spending a lot more time than I should. And the number of times I picked up the phone was too many.”

It’s pretty simple: every little bit adds up when it comes to the time we spend on our phones. Sure, most people don’t spend six straight hours engrossed in their screens (especially on weekdays), but we all pick up our phones throughout the day more times t h a n

ARTWORK BY CARLY WHEELER

we might think. According to Business Insider and Apple, on average, iPhone users unlock their phones 80 times a day, or about six to seven times per hour. Take a second to think about all of the times you look at your phone during the school day alone. During passing period you respond to a few texts, there’s three minutes of screen time; during class you get bored and open a couple Snapchats, there’s three more minutes.

Each Sunday, I dread the inevitable screen time report that pops up on my phone — essentially, it’s my weekly guilt-trip about the hours I spend scrolling through my Instagram feed and the ‘for you’ page on TikTok. The week before I started my phone detox, I got this notification: “Your screen time was up 10% last week, for an average of 6 hours, 37 minutes a day.” That’s when I knew I was making the right decision by cutting myself off. After countless weeks of receiving screen reports with daily averages of more than five, six, even seven hours, I had to do something about it. I was letting my phone consume my thoughts nearly every second of the day, and it was

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unhealthy.

There’s no denying that the majority of us are attached to our phones, so how do we possibly go about distancing ourselves? The answer is that no matter how you choose to go about it, it’s not going to be easy. One Saturday, I decided that I had to just start somewhere, so I sat and wrote down the rules: I would delete all social media and entertainment apps and I could only use my phone to call, text (if I absolutely needed to), set my alarm and check my email. The next day, I was on my phone detox. And that Sunday, my first day without constant notifications, was hard.

Trust me, I get it; this was a very drastic way to go about limiting the time I spend on my phone. I was very hesitant to start this (almost) complete phone detox. When I

think of my everyday life, it’s hard to imagine most of what I do without my phone. Social media is often the way I feel connected to people I don’t get to see each day and the world in general. I hear about the latest news on the discovery page of Snapchat; I stay in touch with old friends over Instagram. But there is no denying that too much of social media is negative. When it gets to the point when you can’t sit and do homework for an hour without opening Instagram (mind you, I’m speaking from personal experience), it’s time for something to change.

So here’s what I have learned from decreasing my daily average screen time to just 37 minutes a day through my phone detox. One: I get a lot more sleep when I don’t have my phone to watch ‘a couple minutes’ of Netflix or ‘just a few’ TikToks before bed. With more sleep, I was better prepared to tackle my busy schedule. Two: my attention span is drastically longer when I’m not worried about checking my social media at any chance I can get. With a longer attention span, I felt more productive, especially when it came to classwork. Three: the amount I use my phone gets in the way of forming authentic connections with those around me. In-person connection simply can’t be replicated through a screen.

All I can say is try it. Take advantage of the Screen Time feature of your iPhone settings and set limits for your apps. For those who don’t have an iPhone,

STATESMAN 43 consider downloading an app such as ‘Moment’ or ‘Flipd’ that helps you track your phone usage and set screen limits. Maybe it’s locking all of your social media after a certain time; maybe it’s only giving yourself a set amount of time on your most-used apps: whatever it is that helps to disconnect from the digital world and reconnect with the people and places that surround you.

If you have a smartphone, do yourself a favor and unplug, at least for a little bit.

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