An average smartphone user checks their phone about 90+ times a day. If you think this statement isn’t true, you can download Checky (for Android users only). This application tells you how many times a day you check your phone.
No matter what anyone thinks of smartphones but one thing is for sure – we’ve become inseparable from them.
Psychologist Dr. Deepika Chopra sees a strong link between social media and the time spent on smartphones. She says,
Too much social media or smartphone usage may be costing you more than just time. Studies show it may be stealing your happiness, stunting development in children, and decreasing academic and social potential in our college student population.
Based on these findings, the question inevitably becomes – how can we spend less time on our phones?
We take a look at 10 ways to help you get over your smartphone addiction.
1. Give Yourself Rewards for Spending Less Time on Your Phone
This concept is called positive self-reinforcement and is used in therapy to encourage positive behavior through a reward system. We usually do this to train our pets but it works for us too. For example, every time you go through a day without hitting your previous smartphone check number, treat yourself to something.
2. Create a To-Do list For Yourself
Make a to-do list of things you need to do around the house, or your everyday chores. And no, do not make it on your smartphone, make it on a piece of paper so you don’t have an excuse to check your phone every time you’re done with a task. Then make a rule for yourself that you are not allowed to touch your phone until you are done with your list.
3. Lose The Friends You Do Not Know
Unfriend people you don’t really know on Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. When we’re on our smartphone, 70% of the time we’re just looking through our news feed, and most of the time we’re looking at posts by people who we don’t really know. This will help reduce the time we spend on our phones.
4. Turn Off Push Notifications
Now this one is super simple, we all know how annoying push notifications are AKA all those notifications that are distracting you. By turning them off you save your battery as well as your time and focus.
5. Read a Book
A book can be anyone’s best friend provided you don’t let your smartphone get in the way. You can get lost in a good book, and reading actually helps you expand your vocabulary. Everything you read fills your head with new bits of information, and you never know when it might come in handy. The more knowledge you have, the better-equipped you are to tackle any challenge you’ll ever face. If you would like a suggestion, here are the 10 best books of 2016.
6. Uninstall Apps
If turning off the notifications doesn’t really work for you, uninstall unnecessary apps completely. Do you really need Facebook and Twitter on your phone as well as your laptop? If you haven’t run a recent audit of all the apps on your smartphone, now might be a good time to decide what you really need and what you can live without. If you haven’t reinstalled it in a month, you almost definitely didn’t need it in the first place.
7. Don’t Sleep With Your Phone
Do you sleep with your phone beside your pillow? A lot of people do. A study found that more than 90% of 18-29-year-olds sleep with their phone beside or under their pillow. Using your phone as your alarm makes sense, but it also makes it the first thing you check when you wake up. You hit snooze or turn your alarm off and next thing you know you’re scrolling Facebook even though it’s 7 am and tumbleweed is rolling through your timeline.
8. Ask for Help
Your friends, family, and colleagues can help you with this too. Tell them that you’re making a serious effort to lose this addiction and since they’re all partly to blame for you being on your phone all of the time, they are the ones who should refrain from excessively texting you, emailing you, and tagging you in memes on Facebook.
9. Get a Hobby
Remember those essays you used to write in school about your hobby? Most of us wrote about how their hobby was collecting stamps even though we had never touched a single stamp in our lives. Well, a good way to break up with your smartphone is to get involved in something productive, start writing about things, go out and socialize, be productive and you can even cook to keep your hands off the smartphone.
10. Be Rude
Resist the urge to respond to others messages even if you feel it is rude to wait. This may sound extreme, but it will help break the association in your mind that every message received demands an immediate response and over time will reduce the anxiety associated with replying to messages.
That’s all from us. If you have any other ways you’d like to share with us, sound off in the comments below.
11: Don’t own a smartphone at all.
ab itna bhe nahi
hahahaha…agree but have a keypad phone that not support Internet surfing……;-)
Good article thanks
keep a feature phone rather than smart phone.
Those people keep tick ticking every time.
In addition to the above useful advise, for Muslims, five times prayers on the prescribed schedule in the Masjid with the congregation helps avoid all irrelevant activities.