Media Balance and Well Being
Have you ever found yourself consumed by your phone for hours on end? I’m sure most of us have. In the current age, computers have become an increasingly important part of our lives. We depend on our devices for work, to communicate with our families and friends, and virtually every other aspect of our lives. An average person spends around 6 and a half hours per day on their devices and an average teen spends around 7.5 hours online per day. For reference, the recommended screen time for teens is just 2 hours.
Using our devices has become an unhealthy habit, and it is especially destructive for young people. Those under the age of 21 check their phones once every 8.6 minutes of their day. Phones are made to be addictive, keep us engaged, and take up as much of our time as possible. This is done through consciously addictive design such as colorful notifications that grab our attention or infinite scrolling that makes us forget how much time we have even spent on our phones. They are designed to manipulate our brain's reward systems similarly to casinos and drugs.
Overusing our phones has been linked to many negative impacts such as irregular sleep patterns, worse short-term memory and problem-solving skills, increasing obesity, negatively impacting the quality of our conversations, worsening productivity and shortening attention spans as well as heightening symptoms of depression and anxiety.
While I still use my phone a lot now, I was positively addicted only last year. I was constantly consumed by my phone and my screen time during certain days would go all the way up to almost 9 hours. I would spend my free time on apps such as TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. My entire life revolved around it. With these apps, I could suddenly stay connected with everyone at all times, share every aspect of my life, and hear everyone's opinions, and ideas I had never even heard of before. I didn't even realize that all this time on my phone had eaten up so many other parts of my life. I always checked my phone, every 2 seconds, and as soon as I started watching I could not stop. But after a while, I found that I could no longer focus on my homework for more than a few minutes, I didn't enjoy anything but my phone and if I was doing anything else I was not happy.
According to experts the most effective ways of limiting the addictive qualities of our phones are turning off any non-human notifications and removing color. “Detoxing” from our phones, meaning learning to go periods without it could also be beneficial. For myself, I have deleted the apps I found most addictive such as TikTok and Instagram altogether because I found that they did more harm than good, and I could not regulate my usage no matter how hard I tried. Using other strategies such as taking breaks, installing a time limit for screen time, tracking your phone usage, and having other hobbies can help reduce the amount of time you spend on your phone significantly.
Nonetheless, phones have become an integral part of our lives and it's quite frankly impossible to go without. Therefore the most important thing now is balance. We have to learn how to use this tool in a way that benefits and enriches our lives rather than erasing integral parts of it.
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