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On September 5th last year, I took part in Digital Detox Day, and wrote about my experience here. I really enjoyed it, and genuinely felt like I benefitted from it. So much so that setting stronger digital boundaries became one of the habits that I wanted to work into my 2021, as mentioned in my goals post. This post is an introduction to how I've been starting to achieve that goal.
When I reflected on Digital Detox Day last year, I said that I found moving all of my social media apps into a folder, banishing that folder from the homepage of my phone and naming it 'DO NOT OPEN', massively helped me. I also thought that turning off post notifications helped significantly because I didn't feel the urge to open any of the apps if I wasn't receiving the notifications from them. This one is still true as they have remained off since that day!
However, making digital boundaries a lifelong habit, instead of just for one day, involves a slightly different approach to just banishing all of my social media apps to a folder which I don't open. I didn't want to use ANY social media at all for that day, whereas I am now perfectly happy to use social media - but I recognise that I need to use it much, much less than I'm accustomed to using it.
I don't know about other millennials, but I realised that the main culprits of my high amount of screen time, (8 hours daily, before I started monitoring it), were Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. Since January 4th, I set all of those apps to have a 1 hour timer on them. What I love about this is that once the timer has run out, the app is greyed out, so I know that I can visually see I'd overdone it with that app for the day, and I'm able to pretty much forget that it exists for the rest of the day, depending on when it runs out.
What I've also loved about this is that because I know I only have a limited amount of time a day that I can use the app, I'm much more selective with what I consume - particularly on TikTok as I follow quite a few people who post multiple times a day, so scrolling through my 'following' page over the course of the day pretty much takes up my allotted time, which means I can't end up doom scrolling the 'for you' page for too long. You'll remember from my goals post that I've been using the audible 'STOP' method when I find myself experiencing negative feelings/thoughts of comparison on social media, and honestly, the TikTok 'for you' page is where I was using that a lot, before the timers were set. Small tip with this one - spend some time curating who you follow - only follow people who make you feel good about yourself and inspire you to fulfill your goals. The things we consume, we think about, and eventually become. Choose what you consume wisely!
At the time of writing, here are my screen times from the past week:
17th - 6hrs
18th - 5hrs
19th - 6hrs
20th - 6hrs
21st - 5hrs
22nd - 6hrs
23rd - 5hrs
I'm almost embarrassed to post this since a 2-3 hour improvement in the space of 3 weeks isn't that remarkable, however it's still progress, and remember that this is one of my goals for the entire year, and it has only been 3 weeks since I was easily hitting 8 hours of screen time every single day. I should also mention that as I did on Digital Detox Day, I do allow myself to watch YouTube, (and currently BBC iPlayer, as I'm rewatching Pretty Little Liars, lol!), for some entertainment. However with Youtube, I do only allow myself to watch new uploads in my subscription box, so this stops me from spending hours trawling the recommended page, which is great because less doom scrolling is ultimately my aim with this.
Another thing that I would recommend is the 'Wind Down' feature in the digital wellbeing menu. I have a Samsung Galaxy, but I do know that iPhones have a similar feature to this, too! On my phone, it makes the screen black and white, and turns 'do not disturb' on, between the hours that you set it to do this. I really like this because I've been struggling with sleep lately, so if I do wake up in the night and check my phone for the time, the monochromatic look won't pull me even further out of sleep as much as a bright blue light would. I also, understandably, find scrolling through my phone while everything is in black and white, quite annoying so I'm less likely to want to use it - it definitely does its job.
I've loved feeling like I'm much less attached to my phone already, even though it has only been 3 weeks. I'm looking forward to strengthening my digital boundaries even further throughout the year, and will post updates if I find anything that is groundbreakingly helpful.
What is your daily average screen time?! xo
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