Why holidays are the perfect time to re-evaluate our relationship with our phones
Summary
Hint: We owe it to ourselves and more importantly, we owe it to our children.
Let’s face it, our smartphones have found a way of meandering into our day to day routines and have come to occupy a critical role in almost every aspect of our lives. Whether it is serving as an alarm clock upon waking up, digital calendars, step and calorie counters, playing the role of personal assistants, allowing us to keep track of reminders, appointments, to-do-lists, allowing easy access to world events often without even a click of a button, and let’s face it, keeping us connected real time to friends and family (and our extended para-social community) with little effort. Our phones may well be an extension of our hands (and potentially our minds!), given the myriad of ways they have rather seamlessly integrated into our personal and professional lives.
Despite the many benefits and conveniences that smartphones offer, our reliance on smartphones and technology renders us as a species at risk of overreliance on them. We don’t need to try too hard to see what the future might look like if we don’t consciously reevaluate our behaviours and choices.
Change of environments sustain change of habits
“Interventions to change habits are more helpful when environments change” (Carden & Wood, 2018).
This is not a new concept, but one worth re-visiting in the context of evaluating (and potentially changing) our relationship with our digital demons. With the upcoming summer holidays, travels, and change in environment, outside of our normal routines, we hope this post inspires you to evaluate and if applicable, change your relationship with your smartphone. Here are three reasons this is important.
1. As parents, we play a critical role in influencing our kids’ physical activity and screen time:
It is no surprise that we set the tone through our behaviours on what constitutes a “healthy relationship” with our smartphones. Increased screen time and smartphone usage has been associated with increased sedentary behaviours, increasing risk of obesity in adults and children alike. Cross-cultural studies have evidenced the direct impact of screen usage and BMI on children and the indirect impact of parental use of screens and the BMI of children. Our children might not always listen to us, but they sure are emulating us.
2. Smartphone usage has been associated with sleep disorders
Sleep is a superpower. Time displacement, sleep procrastination, and poor quality sleep has been linked with increased anxiety, mood disorders, impaired cognitive functioning, including inattention, poor memory, dementia and more.
Many of us have been here before. Whether we are exhausted mums, indulging in a much needed instagram or amazon serial scroll at bedtime, or we are a stressed out financial professional who just needs a moment’s “time out” through a funny reel at the end of a long day. That innocuous two-minute reel has suddenly turned to hours. Yes, that is the concept of “time displacement”, which is especially common at night, leading to bedtime procrastination. Sleep, we know, is a superpower, with poor quality sleep linked with a range of inflammatory physical conditions, obesity, mental health conditions, including depression, anxiety, dementia and more.
3. Excessive smartphone usage, linked with mental health disorders
If you are here, you are probably already familiar with Jonathan Haidt and his book “the Anxious Generation” Although smartphone addiction is not (yet) recognised in the DSM-V as a disorder, excessive use of smartphone usage among teenagers is on the rise globally. An increasing number of teenagers report using smartphones within minutes of waking up, while preoccupation with smartphones and social media, such as “excessive”, compulsive and dangerous use of smartphones (such as viewing a video and walking) are on the rise. Excessive use of smartphones both in terms of duration and frequency has been associated with numerous neurological health conditions such as distraction, reduced attention spans, anxiety, depression, social withdrawal, difficulty with social and emotional regulation, difficulty in exercising impulse control and so much more.
My Love Letter to you Mama…
With change of environments being stronger predictors of sustained habit change, here are a few ideas to consider to support your own wellbeing, while inspiring a healthy relationship with technology for your family:
Smartphone and device usage should be scheduled , timed, and monitoed, not the opposite- something we take a break from. If this is where we are at, let us take a close, hard ,look.
- Consider having a “social media” free holiday. Save the instagram updates for later hashtag #latergram
- Schedule in social media usage time and screen time, set a timer and turn off devices at the end of the allocated time. If that is a step too far, impose social media limits on your device (30-45 minutes a day?)
- Try remaining mindful of your behaviours, do you find yourself reaching out and switching tabs as your browser loads? Stop yourself and enjoy the wait
- Consider phone free days, or schedule in phone usage time. Agree these pacts as a family. Some ideas include- “phone free beach morning”, “phone free alfresco breakfast club”, “phone free dinner time”, “phone free trail walk”
- Schedule in family reading time each afternoon. Consider if this can replace (some of) your Nintendo switch time? Here are some recommendations, if you have primary school aged kids
- Weave in family board games or backyard games like football, frisbee toss, octopus tag and more! Our current easy to carry board game recommendations include, Quartro, Exploding Kittens, and The World Game.
Their brains are still developing.. We owe it to them…
Excessive or problematic smartphone usage is twice as high in adolescents as among adults. The reasons for this are fairly self-explanatory. The brains, particularly the frontal lobes of our brains associated with moderations, rational thinking, risk assessment and decision making are still developing. The connectivity in parts of the brain that regulate emotions, decision-making, inhibition, and impulsive control may also be affected by excessive smartphone use.
Smartphones have become pervasive, occupying too many central roles in our day to day lives. Recognising our relationship with our screens is the first step. Changing our own relationship with our devices will allow us to lead from a place of empathy and modelling. A change in environments such as family holidays offer the perfect setting away from our day to day routines. Our “rules”, even the ones most intended to support them can only be effective if they see us walk the talk.
Remember, how we guided their development during those early developmental years? We continue to be responsible to provide the right environment to support their physical, cognitive, emotional and social development.
Written by Lisel Varley
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