According to a study conducted by King’s College in March 2021, 38.9% of people are addicted to their smartphone. The pandemic has not helped matters: while we haven’t been able to go to work or socialise in person, we have turned to online interaction and entertainment to replace the office or pub banter.
Whether it’s Twitter or TikTok we need to collectively curb the addiction so we can become more productive and less reliant on our phones to keep us amused.
So, what can you do practically to stop reaching for your phone in this way when you need it close for business or other essential reasons?
Luckily, both iPhone and Android have built-in systems to help monitor App usage.
iPhone
Go to Settings and select Screen Time. You’ll be able to see how much time, on average, you spend on your phone either per day or per week.
To analyse this usage further, tap ‘See All Activity’, scroll down to ‘Most Used’ and you will see which Apps you are using most frequently. ‘Pick Up’ also tells you how many times a day you are reaching for your phone and what your go-to App is.
Android
Android also gives you the capability of tracking your phone usage. Through settings tap ‘Digital Wellbeing & parental controls’, tap the 3-dot menu and select ‘Manage Your Data’ then toggle on ‘Daily Device Usage’.
The circle graph on the Digital Wellbeing screen shows which apps you’ve been using. Inside the circle, you can see your total screen time, and underneath that, how many times you’ve unlocked and how many notifications you’ve received.
Changing your habits
If you’re happy with how you use your phone, great, but if you want to change your habits there are a few ways to do this. You can utilise Downtime on iPhone or Bedtime on Android. This renders your phone ‘unavailable’ past a certain time at night so you won’t receive notifications and can switch off totally.
An even more effective way of cutting back on phone use is by setting a limit on the amount of time you can spend on any App on any day. For example, if you are spending too much time on Facebook you can limit scrolling to an hour per day or whatever you deem acceptable. You can even turn off your emails over the weekend or give yourself a news blackout for 24 hours.
So, if you think you are becoming a slave to your phone you can easily remedy this by setting your daily device usage to a more manageable level and not let it interfere with your business or personal life to the detriment of your wellbeing or mental health.
As ever, please contact us at Comms Connect on 0345 370 500 for all your mobile phone requirements.
