Podcast Episode 28: Get Off Your Phone!!

Most mobile phone users check their phones up to 63 times daily.
Americans spend an average screen time of 5.4 hours on their mobile phones daily.
Currently, there are 272.6 million smartphone users in America.
Social media is responsible for 2 hours and 24 minutes of global internet time spent online by an average user daily.
13% of millennials spend over 12 hours on their phones daily.
Most people check their phones around 63 times a day.
Baby Boomers spend 5 hours using their phones.
Millennials spend 48 minutes texting every day.

Being on your phone isn’t a bad thing in and of itself

This really is a time management issue. There are lots of ways that we waste time doing things that don’t really make us happier

The problem with phones is that they are especially addictive

Push notifications:

This is a big one. If you haven’t disabled push notifications then your apps will send you little alerts every once in a while begging you to come back.

Disable all push notifications by default and only enable ones that you truly want to be notified of immediately. For the rest of your apps, you can check them when you want to on your schedule, not whenever the app maker wants to distract you.

variable ratio schedule - Excitement of seeing new things, sometimes something new sometimes not. Same as slot machines

FOMO - What if you miss out on some tidbit of information? This is what the app makers want you to think.

This is especially common for social media and news apps

To cure yourself of it, don’t check the app for a while and see if you really missed out on as much as you thought. I bet you won’t.

Infinite Scrolling - If there’s no bottom then you will never get the mental que or satisfaction from finishing so you will just keep scrolling forever.

Make a stopping point for yourself. Setting a timer is a good way to do this.

Autoplaying videos -

This is common in video streaming services as well as social media

When your show finishes the next one starts playing automatically, this means that if you don’t take initiative then you could sit there forever.

If possible, disable this feature so that if you want to watch the next show you’ll have to physically push the play button. This gives you a minute to decide if you really want to watch another show or not.

Remember that you are in a constant battle for your time, the only resource that you can never get more of. We only have so much time, how are you going to spend it? The app makers want you to give it to them so that they can sell your time to advertisers. They will do whatever they can to make that happen. If you don’t want that then you will need to fight back against them.

I talked about it in my first show but make sure that you are paying attention to others and not ignoring them because of you are addicted to your phone.

Ask yourself, am I making myself happier, becoming a better person, helping others?