How to Break Up with Your Phone Book Summary - How to Break Up with Your Phone Book explained in key points

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How to Break Up with Your Phone summary

Name: How to Break Up with Your Phone
Rating: 4.3 (196 reviews)
Author: Catherine Price

Catherine Price

The 30-Day Plan to Take Back Your Life

4.3 (196 ratings)

26 mins

What is How to Break Up with Your Phone about?

How to Break Up With Your Phone (2018) examines the increasingly visible and often addictive relationships we have with our phones. These blinks consider how we could start using phones with more awareness. If done correctly, we can stop using our devices to provide endless distractions, and instead use them as tools to enhance our lives.

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How to Break Up with Your Phone
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What’s in it for me? Reduce your phone usage and improve your life.

When you’re on the bus, waiting at the doctor’s office or simply walking down the street, do you often find yourself taking up your phone?

This might seem innocuous enough, but the truth is, all that time spent staring at a screen is not healthy. It’s not just that constantly using a smartphone will prevent you from being aware of what’s happening around you. More seriously, these phones are addictive because they’re designed to be that way. Using them for a little bit is fine, but letting your phone usage snowball can become problematic.

These blinks will show you the basic psychology and science behind phone addiction. Using that knowledge, you’ll learn how to build a better and healthier relationship with your phone – and with technology more generally. This is not a diatribe, but a practical guide that will give you some common sense tips on how best to break up with your phone. What’s more, once you’ve made that decision, you’ll be shown how to get the most out of all that free time you’ll find yourself with.

In these blinks you’ll learn:

how hunter-gatherer living shaped modern phone habits;
the relationship between getting distracted and poor memory; and
what hormone regulates sleep cycles.

The number of people addicted to their phones is quickly increasing.

Just take a look around you. On public transport, in restaurants, on street corners, whichever way you look today you’ll most likely see people – including children – glued to their phones.

And the evidence is not just anecdotal. The data is clear.

According to a 2016 Deloitte survey conducted in the United States, the average American checks his or her phone an average of 47 times each day. In the 18 to 24 age bracket, this number shoots up to a whopping 82 times per day.

What that means, in terms of time, was clarified by research published in 2015 on hackernoon.com. Americans spend an average of four hours a day with their phones. That’s 28 hours per week, basically the same as having a fairly busy part-time job!

So how do you know if you’re addicted? Thankfully, there’s a straightforward test you can take. It’s called the Smartphone Compulsion Test. It can be found online, and was designed by the University of Connecticut’s Dr. David Greenfield.

Some of the key questions include: Do you occasionally spend more time with your phone than intended? Do you scroll without any sense of direction? Do you find yourself communicating more with people via your phone, rather than in real life? Do you keep your phone switched on in bed? Do you tend to stop what you’re doing so you can respond to something on your phone?

If you find yourself answering yes to questions like these, then chances are you’ve got an addictive relationship with your phone.

But don’t panic – you are not alone. Let’s begin by looking at why checking your phone really is a form of addiction, and what it means for you.

The hormone dopamine can lead to addiction, and social media is designed to trigger dopamine release.

If there’s one type of scientific experiment ever-present in the popular imagination, then it’s the ones in which rats have their behavior manipulated in some way. Traditionally, the rats are given food or electric shocks to encourage, or discourage, certain behaviors and tendencies.

Such experiments rely on the presence of a certain hormone in the brain called dopamine. And you guessed it: humans react to it, too. But how does it work?

The human brain is easily distracted by nature – and phones encourage it.

Distraction is commonly thought of as something negative. But in reality, distraction is an entirely natural phenomenon. In fact, distraction was key to survival in early human history. Back then, we had to be highly attuned to our surroundings. After all, a predator could be lurking in the undergrowth, and so we needed to be ready to run.

However, that’s not the whole truth. Our inclination to being distracted also comes down to neurobiology. For starters, the act of concentrating is hard work for the brain.

Phones disrupt both short-term memory and long-term memory.

Memory makes us who we are. That’s why the onset of illnesses like Alzheimer’s among older people is so feared. But issues with memory affect younger generations too. Just think of how difficult it can be as a student to memorize facts and figures for tests.

It won’t come as a surprise to learn that phones are a contributing cause of this. Phones can do real damage to your short-term memory.

Phones disturb sleep patterns, resulting in poorer overall health.

Social media is one of the great innovations of the digital age. There are many practical benefits to its existence, but its effects on individuals’ emotional states can be tremendous.

It is not unusual to be flung between feeling happy, anxious, interested, disgusted and lonely within just a few minutes on social media. Needless to say, all that turbulence wreaks havoc on rest and relaxation.

Breaking up with your phone requires strong motivation and an awareness of your phone behavior.

Let’s be clear. Deciding you want to spend a little less time with your phone is not about making a moral judgment. There’s no need to fundamentally change your view on your phone. However, a trial run breakup is a good place to start. It will help you decide whether your phone habits are unhealthy, and how you can improve your interactions with your phone.

There’s no need to panic. You can have a little break from your phone, and you’ll always be able to go back to your old habits if it’s not for you.

Try deleting your social media apps, but remember that it doesn’t mean you’re renouncing social media.

Without a doubt, some of the most addictive elements on your phone are social media apps. Much like junk food, it’s hard to stop consuming social media once you’ve started.

But deleting them really isn’t that hard to do. Simply delete the app from your phone. Certainly, some message will pop up to ask questions and cast doubt on your intentions. Perhaps it’ll warn you that data will be permanently deleted. Just ignore it. In the digital age, that data can be recovered. It’ll be sitting in the internet cloud, ready to be downloaded to your phone if you ever come back.

Ensure your post-phone-breakup time is spent wisely and purposefully.

One of the classic symptoms of breaking up with your phone is called “Fear of Missing Out,” or FOMO for short.

In order to avoid FOMO, it’s very important to know what you’re going to fill your time with in advance of your breakup. Otherwise you’ll just reach for your phone when you get bored.

The 30-day breakup plan starts with learning some technological hacks and changing your habits.

So far we’ve got to grips with the issues involved with phone usage, and how you can benefit from a break. But abstract reasoning will only get you so far. You have to break habits, and that challenge should not be underestimated. So in this and the next blink we’ll look at a 30-day plan that’ll help you unplug from your phone. Let’s get started.

Over the first two days you should use an app to track how often you’re on your phone. You’ll probably find it’s more often than you think. This step, therefore, is all about increasing your awareness.

The second half of the 30-day breakup plan involves a trial separation and a few finishing touches.

The first two weeks of the 30-day plan were all about the phone. Weeks three and four are about you. On days 15 and 16 you should try to practice some basic mindfulness. Whenever you find yourself reaching for your phone, tell yourself to stop, breathe and just be. Listen to your breath. Then ask yourself whether looking at your phone is really that important. This process will strengthen your behavioral awareness and give you a simple tool to stop you unnecessarily checking your phone.

On days 17 and 18, try some concentration exercises. This could be as simple as repeating the two times table as long as you can or listening to a piece of music with your full concentration. If you work on your ability to focus, you’ll improve your resistance to being distracted by your phone.

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Best quote from How to Break Up with Your Phone

Youre guinea pigs in the box pushing the button and sometimes getting the Likes. – Ramsay Brown, founder of Dopamine Labs

—Catherine Price

About the Author

Catherine Price is an author and science journalist living in Philadelphia. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post and the San Francisco Chronicle. Her other books include Vitamania (2015) and 101 Places Not to See Before You Die (2010).

Who should read How to Break Up with Your Phone?

Phone addicts
Distracted and forgetful types
Luddites afraid of the impact of modern technology

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