Phone addiction/ social media
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24-07-2023 5:12pm#1
Hi,
So I definitely have a phone addiction/social media addiction. I can spend hours upon hours scrawling, reading, just mindless consuming social media junk. For no particular reason, there’s no knowledge there ,no education is just mindless scrolling on Instagram Reddit and TikTok especially as of lately.
I read online different things I can help with reducing your social media time and phone usage, such as changing the colours display to black and white, turning on screen time so it locks u out of apps but I just get this really bad itch. I can’t help but go on social media. I don’t have addictive personality or qualities. I live a very healthy life but my relationship with my phone on social media isn’t great.
Would anybody know if there is a course or if there is a particular program? Or if there’s somebody out there that I could reach out to, that might be able to help me with such an addiction.
I’m embarrassed of now and I’d love the help.
thank you
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Comments
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On Android there are digital wellbeing settings and you can put timers on apps and websites
Also, get a watch so that you don't need to reach for your phone to read the time.
Also, leave it away from you and in a drawer.
Also, use a computer for actual productive stuff. And phone, only when you are out.
Also, drop social media. I only use boards. And Facebook if I need to check local community related stuff.
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I have never been sure what the phrase about having "Addictive personality or qualities" even means. If you are human you have what it takes to become addicted to anything at any time. Many of us are lucky that this never happens. Many of us have it happen and we do not even realize. And many of us get hit with one or more and know it and are still a slave to it.
Unless you have a defective dopamine system however - you have everything it takes to have addictive potentials.
I have seen people do well with the "Screen time" and "Black and white" modes and so forth. But in reality it takes a mere few seconds to turn those off. So all it does is put a couple more button clicks between you and your addiction. For me this is the equivalent of an alcoholic putting the bottle of Vodka inside the cupboard out of sight rather than on the shelf in plain sight.
Even completely uninstalling the app like Tiktok does what? Adds 10 seconds more to reinstall it? Again to make an analogy to the alcoholic - this is like him pouring the vodka down the sink while living three doors down from the nearest off license. At best all the alcoholic has done is inconvenience themselves slightly.
If it truly is getting a problem for you therefore I would offer the same base general advice I would for any addiction which are:
1) Find out what the addiction is giving you in your life, or substituting for, and try to find healthier more productive ways to get those things into your life. Think of it as throwing out the bath water and keeping the baby. Many addictions are sourced in feeding some kind of need in our life. If you can work out what that is - you can separate it from the addiction. Often, but not always, this can involve counseling or talk therapy or group therapy.
2) Identify your triggers. That is identify all the things (places, events, people, context, times of day and more) that usually trigger you wanting to engage in the addiction in question. List them out on paper. Try to remove the ones that can be removed and avoid the rest. For example an alcoholic might find being alone in the evening at home is when they are triggered most. So they should work to be out of the house and not alone, like in the gym or something, away from that trigger at those times.
3) Remove the feeding of your addiction from possibility as much as humanly possible. In the case of phone addiction consider going nuclear. Get rid of the smart phone. Entirely. If you really need to be contactable get a dumb phone. Dumber the better.
4) Remember that nature abhors a vacuum. Rarely do people succeed simply by deleting their addiction from their life and nothing else. That leaves a hole in your life. Something will rush to fill that hole. And more often than not the something is the addiction returning. So fill your hole(s) with new hobbies, places, people and things. Get out there and get after it. Fill the vacuum with things that are fun and meaningful to you and preferably as far away from the triggers in point 2 as possible.
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The above advice is excellent. I used to adore social media, and even got a job working in that area for a few years. It ended up turning me right off it because my social account now had to be used for work, and I'd be pinged at all hours.
I used to love Instagram as I enjoy photography. I deleted it years ago when it became a repetitive feed of influencers and ads, instead of beautiful photos. I found I didn't miss it. A lot of my FB friends never post, so I just go in now to wish happy birthday. I wouldn't delete it, but I can go a few days without it now. I never bothered with TikTok or Snap as I don't really care about video content and I have no interest in following influencers.
I found a trigger was when I was procrastinating at work over say, a tricky task or email. Quick social & feed check, 10-15 minutes gone before you know it and the task still didn't go away. Turning off the phone and placing it as far away from me as possible did help. Think about other ways that would prevent you from logging in: blocker extensions for your browser, delete your accounts/apps, even as the previous poster said - consider losing the smartphone. At work, I created a seperate Chrome profile from my personal gmail/chrome profile, so I could only look at work-related websites, LinkedIn/Courersa modules, or business news if I wanted to read something for a 10 minute break.
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Let's face it, you're not alone. Smartphones are an effing curse for most of us. Nearly everyone I know seems to be going around like its an extra appendage stuck to their hands. I'm burdened with some of the same addictive tendencies to them that you've described.
I'm all too aware that scrolling endlessly for hours on end and constantly checking for updates is a fruitless exercise and bad not just for my mental health, but probably my eyesight too, as well as being totally antisocial.
Yet I still continue to do it.
I've often thought about getting rid of it altogether, and getting one of those Nokias handsets that just does basic calls and texts. What stops me is they're just so flipping handy for my line of work, sending and receiving WhatsApp texts and images bolsters a large part of my business now, my customers would laugh me out the door if I told them I didn't own a smartphone.
Stupid addictive phones.
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I get what you mean, OP. I find myself mindlessly scrolling when I want to avoid thinking of whatever has me stressed.
I turned on screen time limits. The limits are still quite high (45 minutes per app) because if you set it too low, you’ll get angry at how quickly you hit them. When I hit that, I know I’ve spent too long on the app and try to do something away from my phone. I find a walk or cleaning the best as they’re active and you can’t use your phone doing them.
I usually scroll to avoid thinking about something. When I hit a screen time limit and still desperately want to stay on an app, I’ll tell myself to put down the phone for five minutes and write in a journal. I write about whatever comes to my head. It might even be about the apps I want to go on. It might not be easy or feel natural at first but just give yourself five minutes to focus on writing about what you’re thinking and feeling. You can often come away from it feeling lighter and end up forgetting about the phone. Make sure you’re writing on paper though, and not in your phone on your notes app!
A friend of mine introduced me to an app called one sec which creates ‘interventions’ between you using apps. You tell it what apps you want the interventions for (TikTok, Twitter, etc). Then when you go to open the app, it makes you wait three seconds at a minimum (but you can make it longer) and helps you focus on your breathing. Those few seconds really make you reconsider “do I want to go on this app or will I be mindlessly scrolling? Why am I opening this app?” because it’s done without thought.
I’ve only been using it a week and straight away I’m noticing a difference in my screen time dropping, and my friend has had it a few months and said the same. It’s a tenner for the year so I’d definitely recommend getting the free trial and testing it out.
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