How To Break Up With Your Phone
On hyper-connectivity doing a number on our brains
If someone had told me 20 years ago as a teenager that I would have a device that fit inside my pocket where people yelled at me every single day for even my blandest opinions, I would have told them to go back to Mars where they clearly belonged. If they had further added that I would be constantly connected twenty four seven to everyone I knew via text messages and emails which came with the added anxiety of “what should I respond to this“ and “oh God, I hope I haven’t said the wrong thing“ while also being simultaneously connected with every single thing that happened in the world, I would have asked how to opt out of this nightmare.
The trouble is, of course, none of us can opt out of this contract that we never signed that says we are now all connected to each other 24/7. No wonder everyone is so stressed out all the time. Usually when we subscribe to something, we can unsubscribe, but how do we unsubscribe from what is now the new normal which emphasises hyperconnectivity at every turn?
How often do you randomly pick up your phone without even realising it? We’ve got so used to hyper connectivity culture that we have even invented words to describe its negative symptoms, words like doomscrolling or fear of missing out. To be perfectly honest, I don’t think the human brain was designed to stay in constant contact with the world, the news, everything that has ever happened ALL of the time.
My grandmother says that the key to a long life is to go on long walks and smell the flowers more often, to find peace in a less noisy life and “taking breaks from the opinions of others”. And coincidentally, she does not have a smart phone.
And this is precisely why I decided a while back that I needed to break up with my phone by creating some really firm boundaries for myself. This required from radical honesty, including realising I was spending more time on my phone than I was making art. Here are some things I realised:
Recognise that your attention is the most precious commodity that media corporations are fighting over. As your attention is the prize, each shiny object on your screen is designed to court it - no matter how detrimental that is for you.
Put timers on social media apps. One to two hours is more than enough for me to post, respond to comments etc and I use social media for work. There are loads of app blockers out there, the one I use is called One Sec. It helps you stop app switching as well.
Recognise that the internet is full of clickbait designed to make you angry so that you spend more time reading it, talking about it and engaging with it. That is precious time you could spend doing ANYTHING else. My way around this is when I see something that utterly infuriates me, I take a deep breath, put my phone down. This has taught me to stop being so reactive.
I put my phone away at 9PM every day (unless I’m out of the house). I have a friend who does this at 6PM. Everyone’s life is different so make your own rules around this one but good sleep hygiene for me is not even having the phone in the room which would tempt me to pick it up in the middle of the night. Some people keep it in a locked drawer just in case an emergency call does come through.
The urge to scroll can be replaced as any habit can. I taught myself to keep a book by my phone and when I am about to grab my phone, I go for the book now. I keep reminding myself that it is better to read a page of a good book than learn why GaryMcGuy83746421 thinks women aren’t actual people.
You do not have to respond to every email and text immediately, checking for responses at all hours of the day unless it is literally your job to do this. Find the right rhythm for you. For me, I try to respond to emails in the afternoon for an hour usually and I stick to that schedule as much as I can. After that, every other email can wait till the next afternoon.
If all else fails, get a friend or someone close to you/who you trust to post on social media for you for a while (delete all the apps from your phone). OR, in case you want a more radical idea, stop using a smartphone. Answer your emails from the computer and get an oldschool cell phone. I got to the point a while back where I switched to a phone with no apps, only calls and texts to keep myself away focussed on a project and it helped me so much, I am going to do it again this year.
I noticed that the further I get from my phone and hyper-connectivity, the more exploratory I am as an artist, I am a better activist for the causes I care about because I am more involved at a ground level, the more I read and I meet far more people in real life.
Maybe my grandmother is onto something here. Life is a whole lot better when you go off for a walk and smell some flowers. A simple solution to a busy, noisy life is to find a way to disconnect and go looking for a little bit of quiet. Just to hear your own thoughts. Just to feel yourself breath.
Bullseye. I think we're all finding it easier to engage with the unknowns in the world compared to the effort of maintaining and building with the people we are connected with in real life. Attention spans are scattered, influencers are being courted and celebrated-as with almost everything in life, we choose and decide. I go with checking messages at certain points in the day only and remaining logged out of social media on two platforms only, once I've checked it (twice in a day). Has given me more time to read and yes, even tidy up my living space.😊
Oh, the creativity-aspect is so true! It’s as if social media is killing creativity because my head is only filled with other people’s ideas of visual aesthetics.
For quite I while I have this thought in my head with the question: Does an artist like Taylor Swift (you can fill in whatever artist you want here) ever go on instagram by herself? Or is just everything done by people who are paid for that? Maybe that’s just the secret to creativity ;)