How to break social media addiction and actually start living

when you're on the bus waiting at the queue or simply walking down the street do you often find yourself taking up your phone constantly looking at your phone will prevent you from being aware of what's happening around you and this is not only physically but also mentally when you're constantly stimulating yourself with the short-term dopamine comes from your phone you start to fall into the rabbit hole of social media consumption think about the last time when you told yourself that today is going to be different as if you're going to become a different person in your sleep and magically transform into someone who you aspire to be chances are you probably spent another day spending majority of your day on social media consuming content you don't even enjoy the influence that these devices in our lives is huge if you feel active but inefficient we are connected but alone the problem is our relationship with our phones not the phone themselves these phones are addictive because they're designed to be that way using them for a little bit is fine but but letting your phone usage snowball can become problematic curing your phone addiction isn't as straightforward thing to do it requires self-reflection and resolution So today we're going to discover some basic psychology and science behind phone addiction using that knowledge we will discover how to build a better and healthier relationship with our phone and Technology more generally just take a look around you on public transport in restaurants on the street corners whichever way you look today you will find people including even children glued to their phones according to 2016 survey conducted in the United States average American checks his or her phone on average 47 times a day in the 18 to 24 age bracket this number shoots up to whopping 82 times per day what that means in terms of time was clarified with research published in 2015 on hackernoon.com Americans spend an average of four hours a day with their phone let's check our screen time so mine is eight hours maybe a little bit more so I'm much worse than the average American apparently if you're using phone like an average American like four hours a day that's 28 hours per week basically the same as having a fairly busy part-time job and in my case it's like having a full-time job plus part-time job if those numbers didn't make you realize that you have a phone addiction let's take a test to figure out whether we have a phone addiction it's called a smartphone compulsion test it can be found online and it was designed by the University of connected to use Dr David Greenfield let's answer some of the questions together do you occasionally spend more time with your phone than intended of course let's say I open Google Chrome for something I want to research I click on the website I read the article and while I'm reading it I see the Spotify app logo down there so I click it and I figure out that my favorite artist release a new song of course I click do it and listen to the new song of your nicely and then I wonder if they release the music video to you so I open YouTube 15 minutes later I find myself in the rabbit hole of YouTube as well as we all probably experienced my answer to the next question is an obvious yes do you scroll without any sense of direction hell yeah another question is that do you find yourself communicating more with people via your phone rather than in real life 95 percent of the time I talk with my friends online not in real life do you tend to stop when you are doing something so you can respond to something on your phone uh yes if you find yourself answering yes or those questions like I did then chances are you got an addictive relationship with your phone in order to fix this problem I read a book called How to break up with your phone let's begin by looking at why checking your phone really is a form of an addiction and what it means for you if this is not the first time you have tried to break the phone addiction cycle you probably know the reason why our brains are so addicted to our phones yes dopamine for those who know nothing about dopamine let me explain dopamine is a basically a neurotransmitter released from our brain while dopamine has many roles but regarding the subject of addiction triggering the pleasure related receptors in our brain urges us associate a specific behavior with rewards once you Associated that behavior such as picking up your phone with pleasure your brain starts to crave more and more don't get me wrong like dopamine is not our enemy our ability to foresee fulfillment is essential to survive dopamine motivates us to do many things the reason you crave a food when you get hungry is because your brain already Associated food with pleasure your food cravings subside naturally when you feel full but when it comes to our films especially social media is intentionally designed in a way to not alert you to stuff it's intentionally designed for you to binge the world's most smartest people studied our brain behavioral pattern and created a service to make people get addicted to it if you have ever tried to limit social media consumption and if you're still watching this video you probably failed because just relying on Willpower is extremely hard for a long-term fix so we need an exact plan to change our Behavior pattern in the book how to break up with your phone it provides 30-day challenge to cure your phone addiction but the challenge is quite long of 30 days and realistically speaking I don't think anyone is gonna do it step by step so I summarize it and turn it into a five-day challenge for those who are interested message to do 30 day full version I'll put a free notion template which you can give it a try so here is my version of the breakup with your phone addiction cycle challenge day one is bring awareness you should use an app or the simply screen time future on your phone to track how often you are on your phone the step is all about increasing your awareness and bringing your attention to it because if you don't know what to fix we can't start so do it day two swapping old habits change your lock screen wallpaper to something that reminds you why you wanted to start in the first place it can maybe because you wanted to read more books or you want to exercise more or socialize more anything that reminds your goal would work whenever intend to pick up your phone try to swap it with something you actually love and benefit from such as reading books exercise podcasts or actually socializing in real life this method of substituting old habits into new habit is actually proven by data for example one organization that uses this method it to great effect is Alcoholics Anonymous which help more than 10 million alcoholics achieve sovereignty so alcoholics anonymous AA asks participants to list what they exactly crave from drinking usually factors like relaxation and companionship are far more important th