If you are someone that has the habit of checking your phone after every 2 minutes, then welcome to the family of cell phone addicts. Mobile phone addiction is becoming common nowadays, and the compelling fact is that it does not concern with age.
Children, youth, married or unmarried and even older people suffer from it, do not exclude me; I am also the victim of it.
Why Has The Mobile Phone Been Developed?
The mobile phone was developed in 1973; at that point, the primary purpose was communication, A tool that allowed talking to your loved ones living far away.
But now its enhanced features level up its usage. It is used for business, marketing, reading, searching, online classes, learning, entertainment, and many other purposes.
If you think that what is the wrong thing in its advancement? The advancement in technology is always a plus point.
Hold on, I do not deny its beneficial aspects, but all these intensifying features lead to its misuse or addiction that has many negative impacts on our health and life.
Disadvantages Of Mobile Phone Addiction
Nothing in this world comes for free. If you think that a mobile phone offers you tons of services for free or with minimal investment, it is not the case.
Like you spend the whole day on your mobile phone only scrolling on Facebook, Instagram or any other social marketing application.
You may find it entertaining at that point, but that free enjoyment costs you many things like:
- It enables you to lose focus in life.
- It deprives you of your goal in life.
- You will become less serious about life
- It will affect your mental capabilities.
- It makes you less social and more introverted.
- You feel reluctant to interact with the outside world and keep living in the virtual world of the cell phone.
- Your sleep cycle will disturb by it.
- You will feel anxious and depressed and zone out every time.
I expect that the drawback mentioned above of cell phone addiction is enough to convince you to solve your mobile phone obsession.
7 Tips And Tricks To Curb Your Mobile Phone Addiction
Here are 7 simple steps that will help you stop looking at your phone every 2 minutes.
- Set Your Schedule
The best way to limit mobile phone usage is to set alarms.
Make a timetable if you are doing an important task and want to refrain from checking notifications and feeds often.
Start slow means do not set an alarm of eight hours that I will check my phone after eight hours. Believe me; you will end up checking it after eight minutes.
Make a slow progression so that it will become easy for the brain to accept the changes as the sudden changes do not last long.
Start from 15 minutes, then 30 minutes, and 45 minutes. Be sure to spend only 5 minutes on the phone after every alarm.
- Turn Off The Trivial Notification On The Phone
Have you ever thought about what makes us check the phone continuously?
It is the list of notifications that appear on our taskbar or a specific sound that we hear after we receive the message.
After seeing them, we feel anxious until we respond to them. We think that we will miss something if we do not check them.
Someone sent you a snap on Snapchat; the other notification is your friend likes your story on Instagram. All these are unnecessary notifications.
All these messages divert you from your preliminary task. Moreover, in my case, the list of notifications also causes mental stress.
Hence, it is better to switch off the notifications of unnecessary applications to relieve mobile phone addiction.
- Use Different Apps To Support Self-control
It is an era of technology. We only need to learn to use it in valuable ways.
Many online apps are available that help you restrain yourself from mobile phone addiction.
Some of the relevant apps are listed below:
- Space: set your goal of average mobile usage and check your daily progress on it.
- Forest is a fantastic app enabling you to plant a real based on your mobile phone activity.
- Moment: it allows you to use your phone more healthily and efficiently.
- Flipd: it will block all the distracting apps to minimize their use.
- Focus mode is a setting available that will allow you to access only specific or essential apps.
It is interesting that we need to use mobile phone applications to cure cell phone addiction. That’s the point I want to explain.
Mobile phone is not the worst application, but our misuse makes it like that.
If you want more reasons to limit screen time, read this article: Why Screen Time For Children Must Be Limited?
- Keep Your Device Away From The Bed
The most annoying habit of mobile phone addicts is to check their cell phones before sleeping and after waking up in the morning.
The perfect way to avoid it is to place the mobile phone out of your reach. Never put your phone on charge near the bed.
Try to place it in the cupboard or cabinet before coming on the bed and set your alarms on the alarm clock on the alarm clock or make a notepad to plan your tomorrow.
A habit of book reading before going to bed will also help to restrict phone use at night and also improve sleep quality and quantity.
How Does Reading Books Influence Your Personality? Check out this article to learn about the advantages of reading books.
- Use Black And White Mode To Restrict Activity
Everything seems good when it is pleasing to your eyes.
The same is the case with colourful applications on the mobile phone. The eye-catching icons of different apps attract us to open and use them.
To avoid it, turn on your mobile phone’s grey scale (black and white) mode. This mode will help you avoid touching the phone to waste time.
- Avoid using phones on the weekend
An easy way to have a happy weekend is a mobile-free weekend. Choose a day, either Saturday or Sunday, to make it a mobile-free day.
Choose your favourite activities to perform on that day like:
- Go out on a picnic with your family.
- Step out for swimming in pools
- Have lunch or dinner at your favourite restaurant.
- Visit your relatives on the weekend for meaningful interaction.
- Make plans with your friends.
- Indulge yourself in your favourable hobbies like gardening, bike riding etc.
- Go out for a long drive with your partner.
So, when you think about it, there are many other things to do other than scrolling on a mobile phone.
A day free of a mobile phone will surely be worth it if you try it on.
- Use A 30-day Experiment To Cure Your Addiction
So basically, scientific studies prove that if you perform something for 40 days, it will become your habit.
These 30 days, experiment means using the phone for calls or important tasks only during this period. It will help you to reset your mobile phone addiction.
I admit that most of our essential task is conducted with the help of a mobile phone, but when we shift our necessary use to idle use, it’s time where should practice this 30-day experiment.
It is the mind training to restrict ourselves from non-essential cell phone use.
Conclusion
For a meaningful life, it is necessary to curb mobile phone addiction.
We live in the robotics era, where different devices are invented to ease human life.
But too much ease only provides harm to us. It is never the defect of the gadget; the fault always remains in our usage style.
Try to use gadgets effectively to get numerous benefits from them; likewise, their misuse will surely make you suffer.
Try to implement the 7 ways to break your cell phone addiction mentioned above.
