4 Ways I've Reduced Unproductive Screentime During a Pandemic

Lauren Rad is the senior writer here at Myrth. From time to time, she’ll pop in with a personal blog post. This month, she’s sharing about how she course-corrected when she noticed a sharp uptick in her unhealthy screen use during the shelter-in-place orders.

I'll be honest: these interesting times we are living in haven't done much for my attempts at limiting my unproductive screentime. Between the doomscrolling, the sudden increase in time at home, and just the overall uptick in content that everybody seems to be creating, I've been spending way more time with my phone lately than I would like to. 

So a couple weeks ago, I decided things had to change. I took an inventory of all the posts we've written here about how to reduce screentime, and I made a list of potential strategies.

I've tried a whole bunch, but here's what seems to have stuck. 

First, I log out of social media when I'm done using it.

This goes back to the idea of resetting to neutral. Much like when you're eating a meal and clear off the table afterward, resetting to neutral puts me back to a finished state where I'm not tempted to go back again and again to things that I've left open or logged in. I set myself an amount of time I’m allowed to use social media, and when it's done, I log out. This helps with our tendency to doomscroll.

Second, I've increased the number of devices I use.

That may seem counterintuitive, but it's actually helped. Let me explain what's going on here. When my phone is the only device I'm using, it means that every time I stop to check the clock or read a book on my library app, I'm tempted to do other things, too. It's harder to resist the siren song of social media when everything is all in one place. Instead, I charged up my watch and my e-reader, and I set my phone down. With the watch, I can keep an eye on incoming phone calls and text messages, which are the primary ways my family gets in touch with me, but I don't see all of the other pings and messages from email, Facebook, Twitter, and so on. It's not that my friendships I maintain via those platforms aren't important to me, but rather that it doesn't make sense for people to be able to contact me nonstop, all the time, every day. 

Third, I've stopped sleeping with my phone in my bedroom.

I usually use my phone as an alarm, but during this time of year, the sun wakes me up on its own and I don't need one. I'm going to have to figure something else out for once the days start getting shorter again, but for now, this will work. I also recommend some of these tips on getting better sleep.

Last, I've set myself a hard stop time at the end of each day when I'm no longer allowed to use anything with a screen.

From 9:00 onward, it's books and bedtime. This gives my brain a chance to unwind and limits my exposure to blue light. I am almost without fail asleep by 10:00 or 10:30. When the MyMoai app comes out, I might just grab a buddy or two and be held accountable by them through the app.

None of these are revolutionary strategies, and if you look back through our posts here, you'll see that these are things we've been talking about a lot for the last year. 

But that's just it. Knowing something and doing something are two different things. 

I can talk all I want about how important it is to maintain digital health, but I fall off the bandwagon, too. A lot. These strategies work, though, if you're diligent about them. 

I've found that my mental health is improving, and so is the quality of my sleep. I find that my kid and I have better conversations, and I'm less distracted throughout the day. I'm also less tired at the end of the day, because I haven't been toggling back and forth between multiple things that are pulling my attention in different directions. 

Bonus: I've taken up sewing during this time. I'm not very good at it, but I've been enjoying learning new skills and applying them. I get absorbed in it in a way that I don't in many other things, and it turns out that spending a couple hours in front of the sewing machine is a great way to keep myself from spending a couple hours staring blankly at my phone.

Have you been successful in your screen time goals lately? Do you find that the global health situation has affected your use of devices with screens? Drop a comment and share your experience.

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