The “Digital Detox” is being reconsidered

Dr. Lembke and Dr. Alter: Avoiding Screen-Hagging to Improve Your Smart Phone Addiction Ttips

Besides a screen fast, Dr. Lembke and Dr. Alter recommended finding other, less stringent, ways to distance yourself from your phone each day. That might mean allotting times of the day or days of the week when you don’t use your phone at all, such as before and after work. It may also mean putting your phone in a box outside of the kitchen during dinnertime, keeping it out of your bedroom, or leaving it in the other room.

Dr. Lembke warned that withdrawal symptoms such as insomnia or irritability may be a sign of screen hogging but that they will start to improve over time. Most of her patients report sleeping better, getting more done and being able to look back after one month, after she fasted for 25 years. She said that if you fast for less than one month you will still get benefits.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/08/well/live/smartphone-addiction-tips.html

Taking a Vacation from your Smartphone isn’t going to solve many of our problems, but we know how to take advantage of it

It sounds like a simple solution. But we know from decades of psychology that things closest to us in physical space have the biggest effect on us psychologically,” Dr. Alter said. “If you allow your phone to join you in every experience, you’re going to be drawn to it and you’re going to use it. Whereas if you can’t physically reach it, you’re going to use it less.”

You can also make your phone less visually engaging, by changing the screen to grayscale or turning off notifications, for example. It is suggested by Dr. Alter that your phone be rearranged so as to make it harder to find and less likely to lure you into a loop of checking and rechecking.

Here’s bad news: Taking a vacation from your phone probably won’t solve much. If you are a problem gambler leaving Las Vegas for 10 days is great, said Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, author of books on digital distraction. If you get back at the slot machines on day 11 it is not so great. A 2021 review of 21 studies that looked at the effect of digital detoxes on aspects like anxiety and participants’ sense of well-being found that most showed either no effect or mixed results at best.

But maybe a detox is the wrong metaphor. Nicholas Carr wrote a 2010 book about the cognitive cost of digital distraction and says that the phrase pulled from substance abuse treatments suggests that we have at least a sense that there is something wrong. The problem is more than the time spent looking at your devices, according to new research. The mere ability to check for messages “is taking up part of our attention all the time.”

What’s more, cutting off all access to technology — not so hard to imagine in 2010 — is increasingly impractical, especially if you’re not a billionaire with a staff. A president for an adventure travel company said that people are dependent on mobile phones for so much while they’re on vacation. Many trips run on where you are not likely to catch a wi-fi signal.

With so many transactions on our phones, it can feel as though the world is passing us by if we put them down, or just log out for a second.

Eighty-three percent 83% of US adults say they keep their smartphone near them almost all the time during their waking hours, and 64% admit to checking their smartphone as soon as they wake up in the morning, according to a 2022 Gallup poll.

I would have an out-of-body experience when I was up late at night because of the sleep deprivation. She stated that looking at her phone and seeing her look at her made her sad.

She set about doing one of the things she knew best to tackle the issue — researching and writing. The result is the book, “How to Break Up With Your Phone: The 30-Day Plan to Take Back Your Life.”

She said the idea that you’re not saying I’m never going to date a human again if you break up with someone is not true. You just say that the relationship was not right for me. Hopefully, you have a moment of self-reflection to evaluate what was good and what was bad about it and what you would like in the new relationship.”

Global Day of Unplugging (GDUP): Conversations with Dr. Gupta, Catherine Price, and Tune in

There is even a day dedicated to cutting back on phone use. From sundown on Friday, March 3 through sundown on Saturday, March 4, has been designated the Global Day of Unplugging, a 24-hour period where phones and other screens are put away and people are encouraged to participate in real life.

What’s the best way to have the difficult conversation with your phone? You can listen to Dr. Gupta and Catherine Price’s conversation on the full show here.