I talked about this in my review of How Not to Fall Apart, but my mental health hasn’t been too good lately. The glass wall that isolates me from the rest of the world has been appearing a bit more frequently and I’ve been wanting to cry and generally feeling like the whole world hates me. But you know, I generally convinced myself that this was pretty normal for me and that it’s part of the whole two steps forward, one step back process.

Until last Saturday. I was on the train to Changi Airport for work and by the time I reached Tanah Merah, the weight in my chest was so heavy that I was sure I was going to hyperventilate or stop breathing. After that, I realised that I had to do something ASAP.

My most recent counselling session included a discussion of the fact that comparison is the thief of joy and that I really, really need to stop comparing myself to others. Because I had this in mind, I realised fairly quickly that my feelings of loneliness stem, at least in part, from social media and the comparisons that I automatically make when I scroll through my feed. And it’s not just the feed of people I know – just look at the feeds of people I don’t know is enough to invoke feelings of inadequacy (oh look, other people are well adjusted and normal, why is your brain so terrible at making you feel confident?).

Enter the Smartphone Detox

Although social media has the potential (and repeatedly lives up to said potential) to make me feel horribly small and a failure, I’d be a liar if I pretended that it was all negative. I’ve made lots of friends on the internet and many of them have transitioned to becoming real-life friends. Those who stay internet friends tend to live in other places. And apart from making new friends, the internet has been invaluable in helping me stay in touch or reconnect with school friends.

Because I experience the benefits of social media, I decided against doing a complete digital detox. I know that my time spent on my laptop is mostly spent blogging or researching things for the blog (mostly tea things), so there isn’t much point in banning laptop use. Instead, most of my idle scrolling that causes all the problems mentioned above comes from my addiction to my smartphone. Being in many different work-related WhatsApp groups trained me to jump at a notification since that might be an emergency or a request from a merchant or something that required immediate attention. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it also trained me to start checking my phone countless times a day in case I was going to receive a notification. And if my phone was open, then the odds that I’d open Instagram and Facebook ‘just to take a look’ becomes very high. Hence, the need to break my physical addiction to the smartphone and the habit of checking social media for no purpose.

Aims of the Smartphone Detox

1. Break the habit of checking social media when it is not beneficial
2. Work out the ideal way to manage social media use (should it be only on my laptop? What apps do I need on my phone? Should I impose a time limit?)
3. Restart positive habits: exercising, writing (not just for this blog but also in general! Ever since I broke my writing streak two or three years ago, I have not been writing as much)
4. Stop picking up my phone so much because the world will not end if you don’t reply to a message instantly.

Some Starting Statistics and Observations

Average Phone Use This Week: 3 hours and 6 mins a day – This doesn’t sound as bad, but yesterday, I checked screen time and realised three hours after I woke up, I had already been using my phone for an hour. That’s 1/3 of my time spent staring at a small screen! No wonder my eyes were tired.

Average Pickups Per Day: 142 Per Day – even if you count the hours I’m sleeping, that’s 5.91 pickups an hour. I touch my phone every ten minutes which is ridiculous, if you ask me.

Average Notifications Per Day: Around 217 per day – Most of these are work notifications and this last week was already better than the week before; last Saturday, I received 366 notifications!

Top used apps: Safari, Facebook, Instagram, Dayre

Apps Deleted:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Google+ – okay to be fair, this app is already dead and I should have gotten rid of it when the service ended)
• WordPress app – I’m already regretting this one because reading blog posts don’t actually get me down and could be a better use of my time than say… Reddit or social media. I’m hoping that books will fill the gap but I may reinstall this depending on how things go.
• Wattpad
• Instagram
• Dayre

Thoughts: I deleted the apps yesterday and but I’m still picking up my phone very frequently. Instead of scrolling through social media, however, I just stare at the screen for a minute or two before closing my phone. Clearly picking up my phone is so ingrained it’s almost a tic for me. So let’s see whether the average number of pickups go down next week.

In terms of mental health, it’s way too early to see if deleting all those apps and reducing social media helped. But I have had a few nice conversations with friends after quitting the apps and I’m looking forward to meeting them. I’m hoping to replace one-sided interactions (like just liking photos) with conversations – either in person or through messaging apps (a bit reason why I didn’t delete any messaging apps). Figuring out how to reach out to people without the use of social media as a start (is it okay to randomly message people??) will be a bit of a challenge but let’s see how this goes on.

Have you been on a digital detox? Please let me know if you have any tips for me.