Have you ever checked your pocket because you felt your phone vibrate, only to realize your phone wasn’t actually in your pocket? 

Or, have you ever curled up with a book (just like old times), only to hear a notification and get sucked into doomscrolling on social media – before you even managed to read five pages?

And if you’re anything like me, maybe you have a few hundred (or even a few thousand) emails piled up in your inbox, and you want to delete them all at once, but you’re worried there might be something important buried in there.

These are uniquely modern problems, and they’re transforming us by changing the way we consume, learn, and otherwise interact with our world – and not exactly in a good way.

In a survey conducted by Reviews.org, 57% of respondents identified themselves as being addicted to their phones and 55 claimed they had never gone 24 hours without using their phones.

Other studies have shown that smart phone usage is having negative impacts on people’s work ethic, sense of sight, social skills, and mental health.

This is a crisis that no amount of medication will fix.

So, what’s the solution?

It’s simple, but certainly not easy. We need to put down our phones and seek the solitude of our own minds.

It may be the only way to reclaim our lives.

Quote of the Week

“Efforts to deepen your focus will struggle if you don’t simultaneously wean your mind from a dependence on distraction.” – Cal Newport, Deep Work

Mindful Living Tip

Statistics show that most people would benefit from spending less time on their phones. However, that doesn’t mean that immediate, dramatic action is necessary.

Here are a few practical ways to spend more time in the real world and less time in cyber space:

1. When you wake up in the morning, consider waiting to check your phone until you’ve brushed your teeth and made coffee.
   
   
2. Consider investing $10 into a basic alarm clock (with a battery backup) so that you can start sleeping with your phone in a different room at night.
   
   
3. Consider deleting half of your social media apps from your phone. This way, you still have access to the ones that are most important, and then you can access the other ones that are less important by logging into a computer.
   
   
4. Go for a 15-30 minute walk once per day – and leave the phone at home.
   
   
5. If you keep your shopping list on a phone, consider switching to scrap paper. Odds are pretty good you get junk mail and bills every week, so you can use the envelopes from those for your shopping list instead of your notes app.

What would you add to this list?

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Author Bio

This piece was written by Christopher J. Fritz, a writer, podcaster, and musician with a passion for philosophy, mindfulness, and sustainability.