Getting rid of your phone addiction

All my college friends have screen times of over five hours and are frequent Snapchat and TikTok users, and although the social media apps people frequent might vary, usually the screen time minimum doesn’t. People want to be connected with one another, but how much social media is too much?

In the recent generations there has been a drastic increase of technology usage. And, especially for college students, being on one’s phone so much leads to procrastination and a very real phone addiction. I don’t know a single person who could genuinely go more than two days without their phone.

But how can you fix a problem that has been so engraved in your brain? Well, the base problem is most people are not looking to change this issue. Everyone is trying to stay connected through socials and they feel disconnected and have a fear of missing out when they cannot frequently check social media.

However, there are small changes to apply to daily life and will dramatically decrease screen time and help students procrastinate less and be more present.

One of the first steps is as simple as being aware of your own screen time and setting personal goals to only be on your phone for so many hours of the day. A common way to enforce this is to set up screen time limits so your social medias and apps of choice turn off after you have been on them too long.

However, with this in particular, one really has to choose to make the change because at first, I have to admit, I simply continued to push back and turn off my screen limits because I got bored.

It may even be something as little as not going on your phone when you wake up and before you go to sleep to begin to decrease the attachments and dependencies most people place on their phones.

A more intense method I have also implemented was turning off the color on my phone. Color entices and entertains people, thus in its absence whatever you are trying to look at or watch becomes a lot less interesting.

And lastly, the most effective method I have found to get the screen time down to an all time minimum is to delete all social media from your phone. I have done this plenty of times and it has always given me a relaxed, comforting reprieve from the stress social media can put upon people.

But in the end, it’s all up to what you are willing to commit to, and if you are open to finding new forms of entertainment beyond technology.