Do you ever feel the urgent need to take your smartphone out of your bag or pocket to check WhatsApp or Instagram notifications? Are you seized by nomophobia, the anxiety of being away from your smartphone, if you happen to forget it at home? Or maybe you can’t help but check Facebook or Twitter in the morning when you wake up and in the evening before bed?
More and more people – including the writer – will answer yes to at least one of these questions. Smartphones and tablets are extraordinary technological tools, which allow us to communicate in ways unthinkable until just a decade ago. At the same time they favored the development of compulsions and bad habits that have the traits of addiction. The problem is not the devices themselves, simple windows of access to digital content, but the messaging apps, social networks, and all the platforms that have flourished thanks to the possibility of accessing the Internet at any time and from any place.
Digital detox: 5 practical tips
It is therefore not surprising that the so-called digital detox has become a very popular idea, almost a trend, in recent years. Disconnect to reconnect, say the Anglo-Saxons: disconnect to reconnect. Not with the web, but with ourselves and with those around us, to regain those social spaces engulfed by the constant need to obliterate boredom and escape the here and now. The Christmas holidays, hopefully free from work duties, are an excellent opportunity to review and perhaps rebalance your digital habits.
We do not need the “days of fasting and silence” on which Battiato already ironized as a prodrome to the “choirs in masses like Amanda Lear”, nor particular Luddite impulses. Experts are unanimous in considering shock therapies useless, because there is a risk of returning to old habits with renewed enthusiasm. Instead, it is better to proceed in small steps, following simple rules of common sense.
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Forget the smartphone (deliberately)
When you meet with friends and relatives to exchange greetings, try for example to leave your smartphone in your bag or coat, or even forget it in the car. The idea is simple: away the tooth, away the pain. Surely for the first times you will be attacked by the so-called “FOMO”. It is the “fear of missing out”, the fear of missing out on something important, a vital communication, a message that – it is certain – would have changed the day.
This is not the case and we all know it: most notifications, WhatsApp messages or social updates can wait. Or they can also be beautifully ignored. It takes some practice, but trust me: it’s a cure-all.
Take the smartphone off the table
At lunch or dinner, ask everyone not to place their smartphone on the table: according to a study by the University of Texas, the mere presence of a device at hand is able to distract us, reducing our cognitive abilities and therefore also of interaction. social. The researchers noticed a real decrease in attention, perhaps motivated by the way the mind is used to receiving a constant flow of information from the device, or by the need to combat the compulsive gestures of holding the smartphone and checking notifications too. when there is no need. Eye does not see, mind does not hurt, in short: make the mobile phone disappear from your field of vision and you will actually notice the difference.
Delete the social apps from your smartphone
Uninstalling social network apps from your smartphones will be good for the battery, first of all, but also for your mental health. If you can’t stay away from Facebook or Instagram, access it from the browser on your smartphone: using the online versions of social media is such a frustrating experience that even the most motivated will lose their desire.
The native versions of the applications are richer in features, make the most of the algorithm, and are optimized to maximize the dopamine satisfaction of infinite content updating. On the Web, platforms do not have the same technologies available, and are forced to offer a less rich and slower interface, therefore less attractive.
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Use technology to your advantage
If you just can’t afford to miss an important phone call or message, then use technology to your advantage. Both iPhones and Android smartphones have dedicated functions to filter notifications and calls, letting only those of your contacts and favorite apps pass, silencing all the others.
From iOS 15, the iPhone allows you to set multiple modes of use, which are activated automatically depending on the time of day or the place where we are. They serve to promote concentration, reducing distractions.
On Android, the functions vary depending on the manufacturer, but all integrate the basic functions for “Digital Wellbeing”, with a menu dedicated to setting up the notification groups.
Rediscover the pleasure of being bored
The reason why we often resort to smartphones in dead moments is the need to escape boredom. During a train journey, in line at the supermarket checkout, in the waiting room of a doctor’s office, the first instinct we have is to fill the interstitial times with the digital equivalent of polystyrene. Empty content, often useless, or worse, optimized by algorithms to tickle emotions functional to engagement: anger, indignation, morbid curiosity.
Restoring the value it deserves to boredom, instead of fighting it, is perhaps the most radical advice of all. If boredom no longer scares us, we will not try to escape it, finding refuge in the mental garbage of Instagram videos, in useless content from glossy influencers, or in yet another pissed off tweet that will add nothing to our day, if not pessimism and nuisance. It is a bit like the concept at the center of the book “How to get bored better”, by Pietro Minto: an excellent gift idea for a friend who never leaves his smartphone.
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