I used to be a heavy user of my smartphone. I was scoring 5-6 hours of screen-on-time at an average everyday using social and messaging apps and playing games. One day, I decided to change it.
All those notifications, various kinds of tones ringing all the time, addictive messaging apps, constantly scrolling social apps, one after another level of mobile games were eating a hell lot of my useful time! They were making me a less productive human being. Almost 2 months ago, I uninstalled all my social and messaging apps including facebook, messenger, whatsapp, instagram, snapchat, hike, imo, viber, hangouts, google plus. I have also uninstalled most of the games from my smartphone. I have only kept telegram as a replacement of sms to communicate with few of my friends and family because telegram is secure, simple and gets the job done. There are 2 games still installed that I played only once or twice in the last 2 months. I have never used prisma and never played pokemon go. 😛
The choice was mine, I did everything intentionally. Nobody asked me to do anything like this, I just thought I should do it. Let me be clear about something, I am not against using a smartphone or the social and messaging apps or playing games, I am against “overusing” them! But, for an addicted person, these apps need to be uninstalled and there should be a strong will power within to not to install them again at least for a significant amount of time to get rid of the addiction. Most of these social apps are available online and can be used with a web browser from a computer and now I use facebook and messenger in this way only. That should also be limited to a short time because long sessions of the same in a computer can get a person addicted again. Here too, strong will power is much needed.
Finally, I have managed to get rid of my addiction with my smartphone screen, at least “quite a bit”. Nowadays, I only have 2-3 hours of screen-on-time at an average everyday. So, after the transition period of 2 months, I can now understand how much time I was losing on my smartphone. There are some crucial features present in our phones that are directly related to some basic requirements of our modern lives that cannot be avoided. So, a smartphone is an essential part of our daily lives. I still use my phone but mainly for calling, a little texting, reading news articles, a little music occasionally and to click a picture or a video sometimes. Accept it or not, overdoing anything is an addiction. If you have an addiction of any kind that might be destroying your precious time or money or resources or relationships, please get over it. Please get over it because your life needs you, maybe you do not realise but your close ones love you. Understand your potential, you need to do a lot of work and you need to go far before you sleep.
