17 Jul 2017

I’m not that grumpy old man who’s about to launch into a rant about how social media is ruining the social life of young people, blah blah blah. You’ve heard it all before. Instead, I’m going to offer some friendly advice (that doesn’t involve going on a shitty ‘digital detox’ that tells you to delete all your apps) if, like me, you physically have to stop yourself from checking your phone for new notifications every two minutes.

1. Use Do Not Disturb mode

Do Not Disturb is an underrated feature and it’s worth giving it a go when you need to smash out an essay or past paper questions. Not having your phone constantly light up every time someone sends you a snap or a message makes it easier to ignore when you need to get shit done and reminds you that’s there’s other things to do than constantly look at your phone.

2. Get your friends to call you out on it

When you’re hanging out with a group, it’s super easy to drift in and out of the conversation by constantly checking your phone. Asking your friends to call you out when you do this makes you more accountable and you’ll start to realise that you’re actually being a shitty friend by not giving your mates your full attention. Yeah, there’s situations where you’re just lounging around on the couch and it’s fine to be on your phones not talking. But if you’re eating out and all you’re doing is messaging other people, you need to sort yourself out.

3. Track your time

Go to your phone settings, hit ‘battery’ and then the little clock icon at the top right of the list of apps and you’ll be able to see how much time you’ve spent on each app in the last 24 hours. Once you get a solid look at how much time you’re spending on different apps, you can figure out where you need to cut down and what’s sucking up all your hours.

4. Set time limits

You’ll need to start small and slowly wean yourself off like the addict you are. You don’t have to go on a major digital detox to slow down your social media habit but we’re trying to curb the immediate instinct to pick up your phone and start scrolling whenever you’re bored. Got a long train ride home? Resist checking your phone for the first ten minutes. It works the other way too, how many times have you told yourself you’ll just quickly check your phone before bed then still been awake two hours later down a black hole of stalking people on Insta? Give yourself time limits then find something else to look at.

5. Hide your phone

Out of sight, out of mind, right? Just like those classes where your teacher confiscates phones when they’re on the desk and you have no choice but to keep it in your bag, keeping your phone away from wherever will make it harder to keep checking it every two seconds. The harder it is to get to, the less chance you’ll check it for unnecessary shit so take away the convenience of having it sitting on your desk or in your pocket.