Ways to Beat Your Phone Addiction (Part 1)

So, about two years ago, I decided to challenge myself on how long I could go without screen time on my phone. I started with five hours a day. Then after a week, I decided to decrease that time to fifteen minutes, which would be four hours and forty-five minutes. And so on.

Have any of you tried something like this out? If so, please tell me in the comments.

So, how I started doing this challenge is that I used this feature on my iPhone (Settings >> Screen Time). Every week, the Settings app will give you a weekly report on how long you have been spending time on your phone. For example, my average screen time from last week (October 22- 28) is three hours and fifty-six minutes, which is 6% lower than my screen time average from the week before that (four hours and eleven minutes).

Now, since many articles report different answers on how long we spend time on our phones, I'll pick the latest article I can.

According to Elite Content Marketer,

"The average screen time spent by users aged 16 to 64 across media platforms and different devices is 6 hours 37 minutes per day."

As for kids on social media, the blog reports that:

"The highest media use time is 8 hours 39 minutes per day for teenagers (children aged between 13 to 18 years) per a survey of 1306 U.S. kids." (Common sense media)

And that is staggering!

Before COVID started to rise, the average person in America spent "3 hours and 43 minutes on their phone" while the latest survey reports Americans spending "4.8 hours a day", which in my opinion, isn't too bad depending on your age.

For more information about these statistics, you can go here.

If you're seventeen years old or younger, maybe try to limit using your screen time to two hours a day. If that's too little for you. maybe three hours could be a good start. Just as long as your screen time consumption does not affect your school work.

As for people eighteen-years or older, maybe three or four hours is better since you can be more productive on your phone. I mean, children seventeen years or younger can as well, but with college students, I believe they have more freedom to use their phones for schoolwork. The same thing with older adults for work.

In conclusion, we should challenge ourselves to limit our screen time so we can spend time with family, get our tasks done, and get some good night sleep.

Just know that if you struggle with phone addiction or any type of addiction including technology, there are other people like you that struggle with the same problem. You can either try to discipline yourself or ask someone else to be your accountability partner. I'm not going to go into depth on how you can limit your screen time here in this article, but I will tell you that you will eventually get there if you really want to achieve this goal.

You are not a lost cause if you struggle with this addiction. It's okay to acknowledge that you have a problem. We all have problems, but it's up to us to want to solve these problems. And if phone addiction is one of those problems for you, you can follow this series to help you get through this addiction. I hope it helps. I believe in you!

In part two, I will discuss more on how using your phone for long periods of time can affect your health physically, mentally and emotionally.

Thank you for reading! Follow for more!

Sources:

• Average Screen Time Statistics For 2023 (elitecontentmarketer.com)