Let Technology Help Solve Your Problem
What you may need now is a little hair of the dog. First, acknowledge the irony that you might need apps to help protect you from apps. It seems weird to use technology to help with technology, Price says. I just see it as a tool thats helping you live up to your intentions.
Theres a whole industry of apps to help people monitor screen time , block apps or schedule sessions with them , or schedule social media posts so it looks like youre online when youre not . Since last year, iPhones even have settings to track and curtail your screen time.
As for the phone itself, some people go back to using a so-called dumb phone, or one that has limited internet capabilities. A less drastic approach is to tinker with your settings to convert your screen to black and white. Smartphones are a lot less appealing when they look like an old-timey television instead of a bowl of candy.
FollowPrices handle on Instagram to act as your internet conscience. Nothing kills the buzz of a social media spiral like reading, Childhood goes fast. I hope youre enjoying what youre doing on your phone, over the image of an adorable girl. Its like a cold shower. The Screen/Life Balance website offers free lock-screen downloads that say things like, What do you want to pay attention to?
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Its Good For Your Skin And Hair
Many of us drink water to stay healthy and hydrated, but did you know that drinking water can also keep your skin and hair healthy? Water is essential for preventing premature aging, which is why we recommend drinking enough of it every day. Your skin can become dry, dull, and irritated when you dont drink enough water. When youre dehydrated, your body naturally pulls moisture from your skin. It pushes it towards your organs, leaving your skin feeling dry, so staying hydrated is essential. Water also helps your hair follicles retain moisture, preventing hair loss. When dehydrated, your body naturally pulls water away from your hair, making it look thin and brittle. Drinking enough water can reduce hair loss and prevent hair from breaking, which can later help delay severe hair loss.
Break Your Cell Phone Addiction
September 16, 2021 by Eric
Recent statistics on phone addiction can be shocking to read. According to a study done by dscout, people touch their cell phones 2,617 times a day.
Research has shown people spend 3.07 hours on their phones daily. Among 18 to 29-year-olds, 22% of them check their phones every few minutes. Surprisingly, most people who check their phones do it without being prompted by a notification.
With smartphone usage continuing to rise within our society, there are many harmful effects rising as well. Among them include:
After reading all of these statistics, you might think itd be the easiest decision to stop using them so much. Unfortunately, unplugging from technology can be very difficult.
Smartphones provide so many different things we can do that it can be hard not to get addicted to them. We can access a whole world of information at the press of a button.
Sometimes that can be good, such as reading this self-help article. Other times it can be bad, such as spending hours on end scrolling through social media.
So, what can we do to keep our cell phone use to a minimum? Here are some ideas you can use to help curb your cell phone habit.
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Put A Hairband Around Your Phone
In one of the most thoughtful personal stories Ive ever read on how to overcome cell phone addiction, Brad Soroka recommends placing a hairband around your cell phone. When placed in the middle of the phone, the hairband allows users to answer phone calls easily, but makes other uses of the phone more difficult .
In his words, Every time you want to use your phone, this brings about a mindfulness exercise and makes you ask what is my intention? If you really want to use the phone, set your intention for why, and remove the hair band.
The hairband trick is not about making your phone impossible to use. The practice is about bringing greater mindfulness to each specific use of it as opposed to mindlessly unlocking your phone every 3 minutes.
When used as a collection of tools to improve my work, health, parenting, and life, cell phones are wonderful and bring countless benefits. But when used mindlessly and unintentionally, they become a distraction from the things in life that matter mostin addition to the negative effects listed above.
Learning how to use our smartphones effectively may be one of the most important life skills any of us can learn.
About Joshua Becker
Causes And Effects Of Smartphone And Internet Addiction
While you can experience impulse-control problems with a laptop or desktop computer, the size and convenience of smartphones and tablets means that we can take them just about anywhere and gratify our compulsions at any time. In fact, most of us are rarely ever more than five feet from our smartphones. Like the use of drugs and alcohol, they can trigger the release of the brain chemical dopamine and alter your mood. You can also rapidly build up tolerance so that it takes more and more time in front of these screens to derive the same pleasurable reward.
Heavy smartphone use can often be symptomatic of other underlying problems, such as stress, anxiety, depression, or loneliness. At the same time, it can also exacerbate these problems. If you use your smartphone as a security blanket to relieve feelings of anxiety, loneliness, or awkwardness in social situations, for example, youll succeed only in cutting yourself off further from people around you. Staring at your phone will deny you the face-to-face interactions that can help to meaningfully connect you to others, alleviate anxiety, and boost your mood. In other words, the remedy youre choosing for your anxiety , is actually making your anxiety worse.
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Identify Your Mobile Phone Addiction
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders does not formally recognize cell phone addiction. But accepted signs and symptoms of mobile phone addiction are similar to other compulsive behaviors or substance use disorders. They include:
Ways To Fight Phone Addiction
1. Realize the Intent of a Phone every time you pick it up
Most of us have actually forgotten that phones were made for one simple reason. To make and communicate far away. This much-coveted feature has now partially faded into the background with the advent of messenger apps like WhatsApp that carry in calling features and even Instagram with its video chats. However, thats the exact thing social media apps rely on. Once they have you using their calling, they have you using the apps themselves.
The next time you pick up a phone, try and remember what it was made for all along and then decide your actions. Once you realize you didnt pick it up for any other reason than to check whats new on Instagram, youll put it down just as quickly. Going even further, every time you check your phone to do something, ask yourself if it helps your daily workflow in any way or is it just another excuse to kill time. If its the latter, put it down right away.
2. Keep Social Media at Bay
Social media has truly proven to be a great big hammer that has knocked down metaphorical walls between people living across continents and even different cultures. The simple journey that started with MSN messenger has culminated with advanced , Twitter, Whatsapp and Instagram that have combined communication with entertainment.
3. Limit/ Disable App Notifications
4. Use Apps to Limit/Block App Usage
- Use the sidebar to navigate to the Quick Block page. Press the + button to add an app to block.
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Learn How To Be A Good Parent
These days, even young kids are addicted to their devices. Avoid teaching kids about social applications and cartoons. Children should only watch cartoons on television, you would advise. Most parents let their kids use their phones to access YouTube since it frees them up to do other things. Children who use their phones excessively may experience sleep disturbances. Make a plan for phone use with kids and encourage them to play outside so they may breathe fresh air and be in close proximity to nature.
Smartphone Or Internet Addiction Can Also Negatively Impact Your Life By:
Increasing loneliness and depression. While it may seem that losing yourself online will temporarily make feelings such as loneliness, depression, and boredom evaporate into thin air, it can actually make you feel even worse. A 2014 study found a correlation between high social media usage and depression and anxiety. Users, especially teens, tend to compare themselves unfavorably with their peers on social media, promoting feelings of loneliness and depression.
Fueling anxiety. One researcher found that the mere presence of a phone in a work place tends to make people more anxious and perform poorly on given tasks. The heavier a persons phone use, the greater the anxiety they experienced.
Increasing stress. Using a smartphone for work often means work bleeds into your home and personal life. You feel the pressure to always be on, never out of touch from work. This need to continually check and respond to email can contribute to higher stress levels and even burnout.
Exacerbating attention deficit disorders. The constant stream of messages and information from a smartphone can overwhelm the brain and make it impossible to focus attention on any one thing for more than a few minutes without feeling compelled to move on to something else.
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How Is Mobile Phone Addiction Treated
The cause and effect of smartphone addiction have many parallels with alcohol addiction, drug addiction and the other addictions we treat at Delamere. There is always a reason for addictive behaviour, and we like to work closely with our guests to get to the root causes, identify any triggers and develop strategies to cope with unhealthy habits.
The first part of the process is helping you to stop the undesired behaviour. In this case, the overuse of your mobile phone. We will then apply evidence-based treatments to help change your mindset and develop techniques to prevent a relapse. We use a wide range of innovative therapeutic processes, from psychoeducational workshops to somatic healing, to bring about positive, lasting change.
People who come to stay with us at our wellness retreat beside Delamere forest benefit from high levels of personalised care from a qualified team of doctors, counsellors and therapists who are there to support you during your stay and for 12 months after you leave us.
References
1. Sebire, K. The 2020 Conversation. The coronavirus lockdown is forcing us to view screen time differently. Thats a good thing.
Why Is Phone Addiction A Serious Problem
Smartphone addiction is a serious problem because it has a lot of negative effects on both physical and mental health:
- Aggravating short-time memory
- Increased feeling of loneliness and depression
- Poor quality of conversation
- Adverse impact on the quality of sleep
- Increasing obesity
- Problems with eyes
- Frequent headaches.
This list of the most frequent outcomes of phone addiction shows that the problem affects health and quality of life. Thats why it is crucial to find the best solutions to overcome phone addiction and improve your wellness.
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Kick Your Device Away From The Bed
One habit that you definitely need to get out of if you think you might be addicted to using your phone is using it in bed. People who go to bed and then spend time using their phone before sleeping tend to sleep worse. That bright light and mental stimulation are not good for you when youre winding down and preparing to sleep.
You should set a rule for yourself that says no phones are allowed in the bed. It just makes sleeping harder and increases the reliance and feelings of dependence you have on your smartphone. Its much healthier to keep the phone out of the bed as far as possible.
Try to avoid checking any device at least one hour before bed. There have been proven studies that show screen time at night can throw off your circadian rhythm. This can keep your brain awake in stress or response mode when really, it needs to shut down to rest.
Signs And Symptoms Of Smartphone Addiction
There is no specific amount of time spent on your phone, or the frequency you check for updates, or the number of messages you send or receive that indicates an addiction or overuse problem.
Spending a lot of time connected to your phone only becomes a problem when it absorbs so much of your time it causes you to neglect your face-to-face relationships, your work, school, hobbies, or other important things in your life. If you find yourself ignoring friends over lunch to read Facebook updates or compulsively checking your phone in while driving or during school lectures, then its time to reassess your smartphone use and strike a healthier balance in your life.
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How To Beat An Addiction To Cell Phones
This article was co-authored by Trudi Griffin, LPC, MS. Trudi Griffin is a Licensed Professional Counselor in Wisconsin specializing in Addictions and Mental Health. She provides therapy to people who struggle with addictions, mental health, and trauma in community health settings and private practice. She received her MS in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Marquette University in 2011.There are 11 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page.wikiHow marks an article as reader-approved once it receives enough positive feedback. This article received 20 testimonials and 88% of readers who voted found it helpful, earning it our reader-approved status. This article has been viewed 630,214 times.
Do you find yourself constantly texting, surfing the internet, sending emails, using applications and playing games? Depending on how much time and effort you put into those situations, you may have a problem with excessive cell phone use. Overuse of your cell phone can lead to reduced quality of personal relationships and lack of productivity in daily life.
Arrange Activities With Family Members
Make children aware of the outside world apart from the mobile. Ask them to socialize with family members. For this, you can arrange fun activities with family on weekends. You can include activities like walking, swimming, cycling or baking. This will cause your child to also be more physically active and maintain good overall health.
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Dont Let Phone Addiction Win
Though smartphones are an excellent resource, they also can be potentially dangerous tools, especially for children and young adults. The extent of issues that arise from excessive phone use is still not completely understood. However, as science continues to link health problems to cell phone use, it is essential to be proactive.
If you are worried about yourself or a loved one, there are steps you can take. Do not let a phone consume anyones life. Take an empowered step towards recovery, possibly by delineating a short timeframe in which to complete an all-out phone detox. If thats not feasible for you or for the one with the problem, then bring as much awareness to the issue as you can sometimes, being conscious of our issues and tracking our behavior as best we can is all we can do.
- Google. . Google Trends: Cellphone Addiction. Retrieved on June 05, 2021, from:
- Sehar Shoukat. . Cell phone addiction and psychological and physiological health in adolescents. Retrieved on June 05, 2021, from:
Reviewed by Certified Addiction Professional: November 29, 2021
Creative Ways To Break Your Childs Smartphone Addiction
In todays online era keeping children away from a screen is a huge challenge for parents. However, media also use is not without benefit. Smartphones/tablets are becoming essential tools of learning for children nowadays. While there are many pros to the online world it is highly addictive and might leave an unfavourable impact on the childs development. Irresponsible use of media can lead to harmful tendencies in children.
Adverse effects of smartphone
According to studies teens spend about 9 hours a day in front of screens while children spend 6 hours. The effects of smartphones on children are detrimental. Heres a list of side effects of excessive use of smartphones in children:
- Behavioural problems
- Attention and hearing issues
- Problems of the nervous system
It is a daunting task to keep your children away from gadgets, it may result in withdrawal symptoms including low appetite and temper tantrums.
Here are 14 creative ways to break your childs smartphone addiction:
How to protect kids from smartphone
Along with the above-mentioned ways to keep your child away from the mobile phone, you can also take care of the following points to protect him from the harmful effects of mobile phone radiation.
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