I recently stumbled across an article that showed how addictive, and dangerous,
our smartphones can be.
It said that 6 in 10 people admitted that they couldn't handle being away from their phones for more than a day, and it gave lots of other stats that revealed how completely lost (both literally and figuratively) most would be without a phone in their hand.
It reminds me of a post that I (yes, ironically) saw on Facebook last year:
Someone asked their friends if they could live without any Internet access for one year in exchange for a million dollars ...
A surprising (or not-so-surprising?) number of people said that they couldn't do it. I'm sure that bumping the total up to $100 Million or $1 Billion would change the results, but a million bucks isn't a small chunk of change.
I'm not going to preach to you here, because full disclosure: I've struggled with smartphone addiction in the past. I was one of the people who couldn't let my iPhone leave my side, or ever turn it off, but I now regularly turn it to "Do Not Disturb" mode and stash it away in a drawer far away on the other side of the house for hours at a time so I can focus on productive activities.
What's helped me is replacing my screen time with reading books (and some of those books really helped me with this issue, including "24/6" by Tiffany Shlain, "Deep Work" by Cal Newport, and "Indistractable" by Nir Eyal to name a few ...)
I'm not suggesting that you totally ditch your smartphone - I know there are positives that come with them - but to examine your relationship with yours and decide if you need to reduce your screen time.
If you're looking to replace your screen time with something that's healthier for your brain (and your bank account), subscribe to my Secret Coach Club hard copy newsletter.
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Marc Mawhinney
PS: if you'd like to read that article about smartphone addiction that I mentioned, here's the link:
https://www.studyfinds.org/cant-make-it-without-smartphone/