It's blatantly obvious at this stage in the game that we - and I dare say that by "we" I do in fact mean a large majority of our society today - are quite heavily addicted to our screens. The quarantine keeping many of us at home and out of work is certainly not helping.
I am ashamed to say that as of day 56 of this quarantine, my phone proudly told me that my average daily screen time for the week was 7 hours and 43 minutes. That is a large portion of the day to be staring at your screen, mindlessly scrolling.
Without going into all the medically-backed blue-light something-or-other explanations about why it is in poor health to stare at your screen, I can easily say that seeing such a large number on my phone made me feel like crap. I kept thinking to myself,
"You literally just wasted a whole day alternating between scrolling through Instagram on your phone looking at 12 posts of the same clip being posted by all the fan accounts you follow and refreshing YouTube on your laptop hoping that someone has posted something that looks even remotely entertaining within the 3 minutes since the last time you clicked refresh. You've been home for 8 weeks straight and haven't posted a single blog post since week 1. There are so many things you could be doing right now that you've even thought about yet you just dismiss them and go to check snapchat stories to scoff at the idiots not following quarantine procedures."
In short, I was disappointed in myself. Now, I have never claimed to be one of those mindful millennials (although in my case I suppose it would be Gen Z) that is above the use of electronics. I'm very aware of the fact that electronics have made their place in our world and are here to stay for as long as this planet is willing to keep us. Despite not being the strong-willed resister I've just mentioned, I do not ever want to label myself as one of the "troublesome youths" that cry if they realise their phone is at 2% and they forgot their portable charger at home.
On Sunday of this week, day 64 of quarantine in Canada, I decided to challenge myself to get my daily screen time average for the week below 5 hours. This still may seem like a ridiculous amount of time to spend on your phone, but I have learned through almost a year and a half of trying to stick to various methods of dieting as well as reading Sarah Wilson's First We Make the Beast Beautiful, setting unrealistic exceptions is setting yourself up for failure. Along with that thought, if you set the bar at a reasonable height, then go above and beyond your goal, it makes you feel pretty damn good about yourself.
I'll admit, my methods as of Sunday and Monday for not picking up my phone may have consisted mostly of bing watching Blacklist on Netflix with my parents and bing watching the Medici when my parents were busy, but I quickly learned that my conscious effort to not pair that activity with playing a game on my phone made it quite boring after a day or two. Despite the perhaps not-much-better activities that filled those two days, I did successfully get my screen time on my phone down to 6 hours each. Not my goal but still progress.
On Tuesday I went to visit my mum who has been helping look after my cousins at their farm while their parents work. We played hide and seek, went out to the pond to try and spot some fish - the youngest found a dead one and delighted in poking it with a stick - even worked on some homework. Again, I'll admit I spent a portion of the day on my laptop, but my excuse is that it was productive this time, as online shopping will never be a waste of time... Spending most of the day out in the fresh air and spending my evening doing research to create 10 new rounds of trivia for the family's Saturday Skype night meant that I was only on my phone for 2 hours and 48 minutes! For the whole day!
On Wednesday I got a package delivered, gorgeously soft salmon coloured chunky yarn. This led to me spending the afternoon hand-knitting cute cushions for my apartment that I'll be living in for school this year. Trying and re-trying to perfect my pillowy creation meant a full 2 hours without even thinking about touching my phone. An afternoon hike with my cousins at a surprisingly hot Foley Mountain successfully kept my mind away from what memes my friends and family may have shared on Facebook in the few hours since I last looked. A walk with my mum in the evening with my phone left at home led me to pat myself on the back when my screen time for the day totalled at 3 hours and 47 minutes.
Thursday morning I was delighted to come downstairs and see my second shipment of yarn had arrived - this time a creamy white. For what was left of the morning (I may have slept for a good 13 hours) I pressed play on season 2 of the Medici and zoned in on making sure my stitches were the perfect size and trying not to pull so hard as to break the yarn... In mid-afternoon I made the most innovative, life-changing, never-been-done-before decision. I went outside. Sitting on my front step, I planned the last few rounds of trivia for this Saturday, listened to birds chirping and bees buzzing, watched my neighbour set up the front yard for her daughter's drive-by birthday party - as has become the trend - and I read a book about handling anxiety. With only 2 days left in my little experiment, a great big smile appeared on my face upon seeing that I hadn't exceeded 2 hours of screen time for the day!
Friday saw me attempting exercise and meditation, two things I have been told many times help with anxiety. While I may not be overly good at either of the two activities, I found even just trying them made me feel better about myself. An afternoon spent reading and watching a bit of Netflix completed a nice and calm day with screen time not surpassing an hour.
Saturday, the final day of this experiment (not to say that I plan to return to a 7-hour screen time average), was a beautiful day. With a bowl of fruit, my notebook and my novel, I sat in my front garden, planned my costume for Skype trivia, read a few chapters of by book and just enjoyed being present, something I don't feel I've managed to do for a very long time, if ever. Helping my mum deliver some stuffed animals made by my nan to their daycare kids took up a portion of my afternoon, and the evening was spent trying to refresh myself on some of the Korean I learned at school this year and having yet another comical trivia night.
Saturday was the second day in a row the I was able to so my screen time was no more than 47 minutes. This brought my daily average for the week down to only 2.5 hours! As I mentioned at the beginning of this post setting a reasonable goal only to do far better than you expected leaves you with a stronger sense of accomplishment. It makes you feel like you are capable of doing even more, going even further than you thought possible.
It was during my quiet time in my front yard that I decided to log-and-blog my electronic dieting, as I have named it. While what I'm doing isn't by any means moving mountains in society, it is something that has managed to both make me feel proud of myself, having accomplished my goal, as well as bring into light many ways that I could occupy myself that don't involve the toxic social media activity I have become so consumed by. You may be thinking, after reading my account of how my week was spent, that I should have been doing most of this things in the first place. That is exactly my point. I should have, but I wasn't. I find it extraordinary how one week spent with a conscious effort to stay off my phone was enough to brighten my mood and get me to spend time doing and enjoying everyday activities that should have been present in my life to begin with.
This little experiment of mine has led me to realise, as I'm thinking of a title for this post, that screen time is not me time. When I sit outside on a lovely May afternoon thinking about what it is I actually do on my phone, I come to the conclusion that it really does nothing for me. It's all quite mindless. I type "lol" in response to a funny Snapchat despite the fact that I didn't even exhale in humour at whatever it was I read. I scroll and scroll and scroll through my Instagram feed and the only emotions I can ever recall is annoyance at the abundance of ads and boredom at the repetitiveness of posts. Maybe looking on Facebook Marketplace for furniture for my apartment gets my brain slightly more active, but even that more often than not leads to frustration at the lack of options, or the notion of having to spend money at a time where I have no income. Finding more productive ways to use my time all week also made the time I did spend on my phone more meaningful. I actually had something to do on my phone, people to catch up on, it wasn't all just mindless refreshing and scrolling.
My point in all this is, this week of consciously shunning my phone as much as possible has led me to a possibly quite cheesy revelation - over-using technology turns me into technology. Reviewing my daily routine over the past 8 weeks sees me as basically a robot, and I don't want to be a robot.
Sarah Wilson talks about this strategy in the book I mentioned earlier, crediting the idea of mental muscle building to Eugene Veshner, a Russian-Chinese hypnotist that helped her a lot in her twenties. It is the gradual building of a new habit to over-rule a bad habit, rather than trying to delete the bad habit altogether. I am in no way quitting my phone, it is still a necessity in many ways. I am instead strengthening my bond with myself and my awareness, so that it is stronger than my attachment to social media and brain-rotting video games.
The change makes a significant difference on how I feel, not only about myself but about the world. I went through a dark spot over the past few weeks, cried a lot, didn't feel I had the energy to smile, didn't want to go outside. Once I decided to try this idea, I have found myself in a better mood, enjoying the sunshine. I haven't been moping and dwelling on things I can't control as much I had been the past few weeks. I can find joy in something as simple as seeing a cardinal in the tree in the front garden, something which I'm sad to say I wouldn't have batted an eyelash at had it happened a week ago. Maybe nice weather has some claim on the improvement in my mood, and not just the phone-shunning, but the pride I feel in accomplishing this goal is something I want to acknowledge and celebrate regardless. This is the lightest I have felt in weeks.
It may not seem like much but my goal from the past week was my first goal, which I plan to follow with another, then another, hopefully while also maintaining the changes I have made so far. Perhaps they won't be limited to a week, perhaps they won't have anything to do with my screen time, but seeing that I could accomplish this has made me want to do it again and again in whatever aspect of my life I think can and should be improved next.
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