decentering men? Girl decenter that damn phone first!
I believe that 90% of my problems could be solved by taking a deep breath, closing my eyes, and putting the phone down. Yes, the people you sleep with or have romantic inclinations for can be all consuming in your mind. But do you know what’s making that worse? Being addicted to your phone and stalking their IG stories and Spotify playlists. BE BETTER! (Not me though I haven’t done that in ages #healed.)
The question is, why do people have to watch videos while eating? Why does my roommate need to have the celebrity Great British Bakeoff in the background of everything? Why is my other roommate addicted to Youtube Shorts? Why do I know multiple people who will put on a Youtube video to eat in a restaurant, while with a group?
We’re suffering from too much stimulation, as our little minds can only handle so much. I genuinely think I need a timed lock box for my phone while I’m at work, but unfortunately, I am required to use social media - I’m between a rock and a hard place. Never get into influencer marketing or social media if you want to have a healthy screen time.
How do you fix this? First off, I don’t know. Here’s what my roommates and I have tried to varying degrees of success:
We’ve been trying to implement something we’re lovingly calling, “Morning Meditation,” where we sit on our balcony with no phones and nothing but each other. This has been going on for the past week or two, and it’s been quite good so far, unless it’s too close to 9 AM (when I start work). I’ll feel an innate need to check my phone and keep it nearby due to a fear of missing an important message, which defeats the whole purpose.
My roommate has taken some other drastic measures by deleting Instagram and TikTok. She warns that if you do this, you will freak out in the bathroom because you have nothing to do. I’m not able to try this one as aforementioned, but when I had an internship in influencer marketing back in the day (2022), I would delete Instagram and TikTok every night and redownload it in the morning before work. This was somewhat effective because I was on a Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule, and got chunks of time away from social media.
When doing work, some friends and I have tried trading phones so that we can focus solely on the task at hand. This works extremely well when in a group of two, and has diminishing returns as more people are added. The temptation to talk is too high.
I’ve added an automation to my phone that changes my screen to greyscale at 11:30 PM and back to normal at 7:30 AM. Part of the reason why it’s so hard to put the phone down is because of the colors and blue light! This is probably one of the most successful things I’ve done to help myself get better rest, but you need to have enough self control to not go into your settings and turn it off. Just a teensy bit of discipline.
Another one my roommate has tried is “microdosing on boredom,” which just means that she doesn’t listen to music all the time when doing tasks. For example, when washing her face or showering, she now does it in silence. I’ve also had a friend get rid of their Spotify Premium so that they couldn’t listen to music they wanted all the time. Personally, this has never been a huge issue for me so I can’t say whether microdosing boredom truly works or not.
PLEASE let me know if you’ve tried anything else and if it’s worked.
