The last year or so has forced many of us to resort to social media as a means of social interaction. I, for one, became radically reliant on it to stay connected with family and friends that I was banned from seeing in person. Before then, social media wasn’t a major culprit in my life and I really couldn’t care less if it existed.
Slowly, however, the advantages turned into inevitable side effects. Phone addiction slowly seized up on me. I would stay up late to text friends who live in different time zones and drop everything I’m doing to pick up my phone when I received a notification. July 2020, mid-quarantine, was when this hit me the hardest. It was summer and there was not much else to do. So, I woke up to my phone and went to bed on it.
When the academic year started and I had to get back into a healthy routine for my sports and extracurriculars, I realized what a mess I had gotten myself into. I had to back off quickly and break the bad habit before it became full-blown addiction.
That process made me feel for what most people my age are going through (and have been going through for years). I ache for all my peers and friends who have fallen into the trap of addictive technology. It’s a whole business, “the business of keeping us hooked,” as professor of marketing Adam Alter likes to call it. You benefit other people by destroying yourself. That’s really what it is.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I still love social media and use it pretty much every single day. I am just as biased as anyone else because I use it to watch all my favorite movies and videos, listen to my favorite podcasts, and connect with my favorite people.
I also think it is a highly effective method for influencing young people and exploring all aspects of yourself. But, the difference is that I now set boundaries and enforce them every single time. I’m also much more aware of the science behind certain marketing strategies, the truth of the influencers I follow, and the extent of my own influence on others and their influence on me.
Nonetheless, we are all susceptible to phone addiction and spending excessive amounts of time on the internet. The good news is that there are real, science-backed strategies that can help us break those negative habits.
1. Use Identity Statements
Changing a negative habit can be really hard for many of us because of the verbiage we use when approaching our problem areas. We attempt to force change on the surface without making it arise from our identity first.
For instance, many of us will make statements like “I can’t check my phone more than once an hour,” which is a good and noble goal, but isn’t really conducive to real habit change. A far more effective statement would be, “I don’t check my phone more than once an hour.”
The second statement is a declarative one, it reveals what kind of person you are. When you say “I don’t,” you are announcing your power of decision-making; you are a proactive force. When you say “I can’t,” you are making it seem as though some external force is controlling what you do or don’t do. And:
The way human motivation works and the way human decision-making works is that we do much better when it’s something that feels like it arises within us. We don’t like being told what we can and can’t do.
Adam Alters
2. Prevent Temptation
I have a big problem with placing ourselves in environments and situations that we KNOW aren’t beneficial. If you have a gut feeling that something is wrong, suspicious, or might be a potential temptation, but you still do it anyways, then that is the height of foolishness in my opinion.
Yet, we still allow temptation to happen in subtle ways. We put our phones literally two inches away from us while we “study” and stick it in our back pockets while we attend family gatherings or class lectures (guilty!). I mean, how do we expect ourselves not to go on it?!
You can basically design the environment that best enables you to achieve your goals by: ensuring that temptation is far away and reducing the amount of temptation when it must be near. That means, put your phone far away when you need to be doing something else and turn off non-essential notifications when you need to be on your phone.
3. Make a “Stopping Rule”
I had a friend over for a sleepover once, and before we both went to bed she went on her phone and said, “let me just check Instagram for a second.”
I went to bed and woke up a couple of hours later to use the restroom and she was still on her phone! When I asked her why she said, “It’s been that long?!”
Like, yeah sis, did you think you discovered time travel or something?
The point is, many people may get in a big loop and keep on “browsing and checking” and lose all sense of time. You check email, Tiktok, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram…and by the time you’ve done all that it’s time to do another round. Scientists call it a “ludic loop.” It’s what slot machines are designed to produce.
The phone checking and browsing essentially becomes a “happy place” that you get lulled into. And so you keep repeating the actions over and over (because you are comfortable and happy), until something shakes you out if it.
Read: Social media copies gambling methods ‘to create psychological addiction’
You can use a countdown timer or make stopping rules using identity statements, like “I don’t use social media during my work hours.”
4. Prepare in Advance for Failure
Most likely you’ve seen some version of this move: the main character knows he’s going to turn into a werewolf around nightfall, so he runs away from the party to transform away from the prowling eyes of other people and not cause harm.
You, like this main character/monster, can make smart decisions in anticipation of a problem. Doing the right thing is hard. What you want to do is make it easier for your future-self.
You probably know what your weaknesses are and what your biggest temptations include, so assume that you will fall into them. Now what can you do to make sure that doesn’t happen? Perhaps, turn your phone completely off, leave it in another room, or set a timer for how long you can use it.
5. Replace It With Another Habit
The truth is that we really don’t “break habits,” we replace them. You find another behavior that is a stand-in for the behavior you want to be doing. Your focus on the positive behavior will make the desire for the negative one die away. Instead of reaching for your phone, how about reaching for a book? Or a board game? Or a real conversation with the person nearest to you?
Phone addictions are over-hyped. There are many alternatives that can feed the same desire for a browse or entertainment. To successfully stop going on your phone so much, you need to find an alternative “place-holder,” something to fill the gap.
For me, it is reading blogs and articles about topics I’m passionate about. I carefully selected my list of topics on google and I get a refreshed feed every hour or so with all the latest articles. Scrolling through that feed gives me the same pleasure as scrolling through Instagram or Facebook, but in reality I am educating myself and doing something constructive, rather than destructive. I encourage you to find a similar action that can work for you.
Conclusion:
Technology can be a wonderful thing if we use it wisely. It can be used to connect with people, to inspire, to educate, to enhance, to build, to create, to influence, and to grow. Don’t let the negative aspects get to you. Don’t compare yourself to others on there, don’t spread negativity or cyberbully, and don’t allow yourself to rely on it too much and waste the good moments in your life. Phone addiction is becoming more real and real, but like with many problems that we encounter, it can be treated properly with real science-backed strategies.