The influx of technology serves many great purposes, however; it’s important to know when that connectivity is affecting your life or your health. When we constantly have our nose in our phone we are missing out on important bonds that we could be building with our children and our partners. Friendships get lost in the mix when they rely solely on social media platforms and text messages, simply because we need face to face connections for our mental health.
If you find yourself feeling lonely, it could be a sign that you are spending too much time commenting on posts and keeping up with group texts when you should be scheduling face to face meet-ups, where you can gain real-life connections. In addition to sucking our relationships dry, excessive technology use can also result in a major lack of productivity. Here are a few tips to help you put the phone down and know when you need to focus on things outside of technology.
Eliminate your temptations. If you are known for checking your phone while sitting at red lights, do yourself and everyone else on the road a favor, and leave your phone out of reach. Put in in the back seat or in your purse in the trunk, and you will no longer find yourself having the urge to check your phone.
Designate down time. Phone usage is addictive, which is why people will spend countless hours scrolling through social media posts, only to find themselves not accomplishing anything. What do you really gain from keeping tabs on a high school classmate you never really knew well anyways? Unless you plan on building a new bond with this person, try and avoid mindless scrolling. Dedicate certain chunks of time during the day for ‘check out’ times, where you put your phone down and tackle other hobbies or projects. You will find that you forget what was so interesting on the phone before you put it down.
Set boundaries. Nowadays people get all worked up if they fail to get an immediate response. While this quick reaction time is great, it also puts a lot of pressure on us to constantly be checking our phones. If you want to avoid getting caught up in the addiction of phone usage, then you need to tell people that you may not get back to them right away due to other commitments. This will prevent you from feeling the need to check your phone constantly, because we all know that one quick check could lead to an hour of getting sidetracked on social media.
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