In nine steps .. How do you get rid of your smartphone addiction?

What is the first thing you do in the morning immediately after you wake up?If you represent the vast majority of people, it will be related to your smartphone, you will want to get to know the last WhatsApp messages, Facebook notifications and messages, perhaps you will take care of the person who shared your post with a distinguished comment, this may cause a wave of immediate happiness, but it soon does notIt ends when you see that authored comment on another publication for you, and happiness turns into anger in one moment.

The average person (1) hits about 2,600 clicks on the smartphone screen every day, reaching in the most extreme cases to twice this number, you may not imagine that - on average - you pick up your smartphone about 90 times a day, in order to examine it, perhaps for seconds and then restore itIn 2017, about two -thirds of the world spent a period of four hours and exceeded the seven -hour barrier on the smartphone per day.

Sometimes it develops to what is deeper than that, as (2) "phobias of loss of smartphones", a contemporary concept that has not yet been turned into a clinical (satisfactory) diagnosis, indicates that the person feels uncomfortable when he is unableAccess to his smartphone regularly, whether when the phone is not with it, or even when he is not able to easily access the Internet, or when the battery indicator begins to launch its warnings.The most evolving symptoms appear when we nurture due to the interruption of the network to the degree that makes one of us examine its existence almost every minute!

This leads us - no doubt - to ask about the impact of this newcomer to our world on our behavior and our practice of our natural lives, and can our interest in smartphones be developed to become our addiction?According to Eric Bieber and Richard Harvey (3) of the University of San Francisco, there is a link between excessive use of smartphones and the main symptoms of drug addiction, to the extent that the excessive use of the smartphone creates brain connections in the same way made by the drug oxconnene that some patients eat.In order to gradually relieve pain.

Just as there are two types of food in our lives, the food that compensates our daily need for calories, and salty or filled with succials that we can continue to eat even if we are in need of it, only because it is delicious and attracts us, we are attracted to smart phones because of those light stimuliThe delicious voice that is satisfied with our other instinct is completely hunger, which is the communication instinct.There is a suitable amount of communication - as there is an appropriate amount of food - if you exceed it, we will turn into communications communications via smartphones as we become food addicts, both of whom are harmful to health.

Consider, for example, putting constipation with the smartphone that we always take, when we join our shoulders and bend our head down and raise our hands near our face, this is not normal, our bodies were not designed to take this strict situation, but we do this against our will and continue for hours, can we define this as addictionTRUE?On a medical point of view, we cannot define smartphones addiction as we define heroin addiction, for example, but there is no doubt that we become attracted, in a manner that seems oppressive, aspect of doing something that it was not natural to do.

On the other hand, adhesion to smartphones makes us less related to the world.Friends, family, or even co -workers, and our social lives are not - as you think - with something, it is a lifestyle that generations inherited behaviorally and biologically, during the period of our human being on this planet that may exceed the barrier of 300 thousand years, so the need to belong toA group - a family or even a group of friends - and interacting with it is not a kind of luxury, but rather a major condition to live a good life, emotionally and mentally.

In addition, your presence is alone for long periods causes a deep feeling of unit (4), which is one of the most important factors that may push a person to develop depression ideas, on the other hand, there are several additional reasons that help us doubt that the presence of this relationship between depression and excessive useFor smartphones, because of these phones, teenagers sleep less time than usual, and they refrain from practicing many daily activities that are useful for their physical and mental health.

We can continue to talk about the possible damage to smartphones and we do not stop before we fill a complete book, as Susan Greenfield has already done in her book "The Mind Change", which is critically exposed to all contemporary digital means, but let's stop a little at that point and search for an opportunityIn the midst of this chaos: Can we really stop this contemporary addiction?Will a day come to stop the habit of wandering on the home page without a goal as if we were on that?

It starts to achieve sufficient awareness of the problem, as many do not know the number of times they agree to their smartphone, it has become normal and repeated so that it has almost unconsciously happens, at that point you can start using any of the applications that allow you to know the number of times that openedIt has your smartphone daily.Checky, for example, will help you - starting with estimating the size of the problem, which already knows it is present.

Another applications group can give you a better opportunity to understand your most deep relationship with smartphone. For example, "Quality Time" can calculate the number of daily hours you spend on your smartphone, and give you statistics about your peak hours of use, and the applications you add to more than others,You can also use these applications to take a period of time, which you are determined, away from your smartphone.This will give you a better opportunity to control, especially if you are excessive to use the phone, but do not fall into the trap of collecting applications to move away from smartphones, just one application is enough.

Is it really important to follow every notice on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram?It may be necessary to get to know the Google Post because it relates to work, but social media is not that importance, so working to close the largest possible number of notifications coming from your smartphone is no doubt an effective mechanism, put these notifications on the situation.Silently, "and if you want - if you want - every half an hour, you miss a maximum, but this plan can start gradually (every 15 minutes, for example).

One of the effective mechanisms to deal with smartphones and the world of communication in general, is to limit its use within specific domains, in a more clear sense: prevent yourself from reaching the smartphone in specific cases, such as going out to buy some household supplies, or in the event of guests or relatives, orWhile sitting with your friends, or during food, and of course we recommend that you put it out of the room completely while remembering lessons, or reading in one of the books, a period of no less than half an hour.

One of the most important consequences of using smartphones is that it forces us to stay up late, those shiny lights and pleasant sounds stimulate your attention, so your sleep date, but your brain does not respond to that, one of the studies indicates that the rate of teenagers sleeps only 7 hours a day because of smartphones.Therefore, you must end the last day and start the new day without smartphones, put it in the adjacent room before entering to sleep, and wake up from your sleep after eight hours, make your morning activities for a short period, then browse your smartphone if you want.

Every additional application on the smartphone is an unnecessary source of excitement, the average person uses 40 applications per month, and his phone contains 80 applications, you need from time to time to contemplate your applications on the smartphone, remove everything you do not see useful or those applicationsThat you did not use for a while, and surround yourself as much as possible with educational or useful applications in the work, in the end you do not need to know the news the moment it happens unless you are a head of state, for example, take your time in organizing your applications and contemplating their importance to you.

Let it be present in your mind as much as possible that it is not going to the smartphone except with a specific task, such as using it, for example, to search for specific information, or to examine Google's messages from your boss at work, or because you are waiting for a message from your wife who arrived a little while ago to her destination in the neighboring city of relativesThis misconception called "multiplicity of tasks" is one of the tricks that your smartphone can steal your time through.Always prepare one task at the same time, but if you find that you are not able to do so because of the media applications, delete it from the phone and follow it on the computer, because you do not always carry it in your hands.

One of the mistakes in which we make is to conceive that the time we spend on the smartphone is different from that which we spend with TV or with the computer or with any other screen, here you must know that the main problem is that the screen, any screen, withdraws you from the ground to the reality toA virtual world that does not nourish your brain needs and your basic emotions for real social communication and learning, when you calculate the "lost time" you spend daily with different screens, the result will be stunned, as people spend 10 hours a day on average in front of the screens, which is a really terrifying number.

You must have heard that advice a lot: in order to get rid of a habit that you can replace it with another, if you want to read, for example, put books throughout the house, especially in the places where you usually sit, if you take the phone for the water cycle, take a book instead, put itOn the sofa that loves you, and next to the bed to read before bed, take advantage of the extra time to go out and walk without a phone if possible, healthy habits are linked together as one network, as soon as you hold one of its ends until you enter its full world.

Smartphones are a great innovation, and they really enhance our ability to reach a huge amount of information in short moments, free lectures in the finest universities and research institutions you were to have to endure high travel costs to reach them, books, scientific research and public and specialized magazines it should have, one day, one day,To wait for long weeks to reach home, today you can get it with a button.

Therefore, our attempts to control our obsession with phones are attempts to indulge in a healthy way in the digital era, but without losing our attention, without losing our abilities, human beings to separate the nausea and fat, are also an attempt to retain a degree of humanity, and - and if it goes - from our awarenessFor ourselves, what we really want.In the end, the way to get rid of smartphone addiction is difficult, and exactly, and diets are difficult and exhausted, but the results are worth.

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Sources

1. Here’s how many times we touch our phones every day
2. Fear of missing out, need for touch, anxiety and depression are related to problematic smartphone use
3. Digital Addiction: Increased Loneliness, Anxiety, and Depression
4. Impact of smartphone addiction on depression and self‐esteem among nursing students