Our digital life and our real life have become more blurred than ever. If you have watched the Social Dilemma, there is good chance you have thought about your interactions with social media. Our world of 24 hour news cycles along with social platform’s curated content based on sophisticated algorithms can heighten anxiety, paranoia, stress and anger among other feelings. At the same time, it is a great way to stay connected with family and friends. Being so connected in the digital world can result in a disconnection from the real world. If you were honest with yourself, how many hours have you spent wasted mindlessly scrolling?

I know for me; it was a lot. It was becoming an addiction that I didn’t know I had. The pandemic heightened it. The amount that I pick up my phone to look to see if I had an unread email or missed text message is almost as alarming as the FOMO I was developing if I didn’t see the latest posts from the influencers I followed. The first thing I would do when I woke up was check email and social media, before I even got out of bed. It was how I spent my lunch break. It is what I would do while waiting in carline to pick up my kid from school. It was how I would ‘multi-task’ while watching TV. It was what I did before I went to sleep each night. And when I say before I went to sleep, I mean laying in bed watching TikTok videos for over an hour.

I gained a lot from all that scrolling. I discovered that I disagree with a lot of my relative’s political views, learned a new way to fold a quesadilla and uncovered that my life wasn’t complete until I ate feta tomato pasta. Who knew these critical facts were missing from my brain? I was also sleeping poorly and feeling overwhelmed. I couldn’t get a grip on my time management and frankly, most of what I read was really bumming me out. It was clear that I needed to make a change. I knew I needed a Digital Detox. One month of using my phone only for business purposes, a camera and an actual phone. No games, mindless shopping, or social media for a month.

The result:

First, for those who know me know I’m a data nerd who loves a good graph. Here is my pre-period usage vs. the Digital Detox.

Second, emotional results: Turns out, no one missed me. My posts don’t change the world, and I can go to sleep without beating another board on Candy Crush. (Yes, I still played that game) More importantly, I also didn’t feel like I was missing out…. For the most part. No disrespect to all of your carefully crafted witty posts and clever memes, but I can go through my day successfully without seeing all of them. I’m not going to lie though, I did cheat… a little. I did have a birthday during the Digital Detox, and as much as I don’t want to admit it, social media makes me feel the love. And a friend had a baby that I couldn’t wait to see pictures of. The biggest satisfaction of all, I was given the gift of time. I had no idea how much I really did use my phone until I restricted myself. During the month of my detox, I read two books, got better quality sleep, had some great conversation with people who I love, and actually watched shows that were interesting instead of just ‘mindless background.’

I can’t say I’m giving it up completely, but I can say that I am going to limit it significantly. I now have a block on my phone so I can’t use it for social or games for more than an hour per day.

If you are interested in cutting back your app usage or eliminating it all together, here are a few tips I learned from my own anti-social experiment.

1. Start By Tracking Your Behavior – what are your top used apps? How much time are you spending on them? If you have an iPhone, you can see your screen time under Settings/Screen Time. Here you can see how much time you are on your phone, as well as the most used apps and the times of day that you are on them the most.

2. Turn Off Notifications – In each of your Apps’ settings, you can go in and adjust your privacy settings to make sure that you not only no longer get pop up notifications, but also you can turn off your location information and learning settings.

3. Clean Up Your Home Screen – Accessibility is one of the key contributors to mindless behavior on the phone. Make it harder to get to your top distractors. Instead of having a bunch of folders on your home page, just have your necessary apps on the home page and put everything else on the secondary page. Here is a picture of my before and after.

4. Delete Top Time Suck App – Remember step one where you watched your behavior to see what app you use the most? This is where you delete it. Ask yourself, is it really adding value or is it sucking away your time that could be spent doing something more important?

5. Set Up Time Restrictions – If you do want to continue to be active on social media, but do not want to get trapped in the mindless scrolling, prevent yourself by creating restrictions in your settings. What is the max time that makes sense for a day?

6. Establish Quiet Times – Create times in the day where you get no notifications of any emails or texts, and calls go directly to voicemail during your down time or family time. I have mine set up from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. Emergency calls will still get through and you can see all the activity if you choose to. However, you won’t have to worry about the buzzing or ringing.

7. Create A Wellness Period Each Day – During your quiet time, also give yourself a period of where you don’t use your phone at all. Not just limiting the kind of apps you are looking at, but a break for all email, texts, phone calls, etc. Instead, you get uninterrupted time where you can have a connection with another person over a meal, read a book, take a walk, etc. We have a no device at the dinner table policy.

8. Block Screen Time Around Bed – Restrict yourself from using social media the last 30 minutes before you go to sleep and the first 30 minutes you wake up. Make that time a chance to unwind and relax your mind instead of getting extra stimulation. I’ve started reading before I go to sleep, followed by some meditation.

9. Invest In A Real Alarm Clock – if the reason you end up looking at your phone before bed and when you wake up is because it is also your alarm, then it might be time to get an old school alarm clock. Keep your phone far enough away that you won’t be tempted to start scrolling immediately.

10. Find A Healthy Replacement – When do you use your phone for mindless scrolling the most? Is it your lunch break? Sitting in the carline? Laying in bed? What could be a good replacement? E-Book, podcasts, brain exercises, meditation, etc. could all be more stimulating and beneficial than watching a dance video or read a political post from an acquaintance from high school.

The digital age has provided us with a lot of conveniences and advancements. Our great-grandparents would be shocked to learn that in our pocket, a single device can act as a phone, tape recorder, camera, camcorder, calculator, dictionary, encyclopedia, translator, GPS, compass, just to name a few. It provides us with late breaking news, critical weather updates and connections around the globe. The reality is, we did ok in the pre-digital age too. Maybe there is a way to get a little balance back and connect with our own thoughts instead of everyone else’s. But after you take your break, feel free to come back to this blog as often as you’d like… I always appreciate the mindless-scroll and comments.