The first week of my smartphone detox is over and it’s been interesting. I don’t know if there’s a term for this – smartphone tic? – but I’ve picked up and put down my phone so many times. Thankfully, I’m starting to stop myself, but the habit of looking at my phone whenever I feel bored is very ingrained.

I actually met up with a friend for lunch this week – apart from this friend being one that I haven’t seen for about 9 years (until we met at a mutual friend’s wedding, then again last month at another mutual friend’s wedding) – she’s also a low social-media user. The difference in our behaviour was noticeable. I basically had my phone out all the time, even though none of it is going to be uploaded, while she just left her phone to one side for the whole lunch. To be honest, I enjoyed myself a lot more when my phone was put aside and the whole lunch was a huge reminder that we shouldn’t let online distractions take us away from being present in offline communication.

This week’s statistics and thoughts

Average Phone Use This Week: 2 hours and 26 minutes per day – that’s 40 minutes less than last week, which would make sense because the biggest change comes from not using my phone during my commute. It’s a good start, but I’d like to see if I can get it to 2 hours because that would mean that I’m also cutting down phone usage at home.

The highest usage days were Thursday and Saturdays and I know why – on Thursday, I spent my entire commute messaging my friends. On Saturday, I was out and that normally increases my phone use because I use Google Maps to find my way.

Average Pickups per Day: 117 per day – That’s 25 less than last week. Friday was my worst day (188 pickups) and I actually don’t know why! It seemed like a fairly ordinary work day to me.

Average Notifications per Day: Around 243 per day – That’s about 23 more per day compared to last week. It can’t really be helped, since most of them were work (I had 907 notifications from Whatsapp alone).

Top used apps: Safari, Telegram, Tsum Tsum, Whatsapp (in that order).

Apps Deleted: -NIL-

Apps Re-installed: WordPress – I deleted WordPress on the basis that the commenting and liking functions made it like a social network. But I didn’t realise that most of my book and tea recommendations come from the blogs I follow and it’s a much better use of my time to scroll through the app instead of just surfing the internet. So I re-installed the app on Wednesday.

Thoughts: I went for an oolong workshop yesterday and it made me realise that social media isn’t completely useless – I found this from the Instagram of one of my friends. So I’m definitely going to go back to social media after this detox because I do get valuable information from it, but I’ll have to think about how I should be using the apps (I’m very tempted not to re-install Facebook and look into timers for Instagram).

It’s only been a week so I don’t know if I’m just imaging it, but I am enjoying not looking at everyone’s life updates. I know it sounds terrible, but I’ve been messaging good friends whenever I remember and knowing what’s up with them is all I need for now. I don’t know if I’m going to get FOMO or feel lonely in the coming weeks, but the no-comparison thing is peaceful. I do miss all the cute pictures of my niece and nephew, though, but I do get some from the family Whatsapp group so it’s not like I’m totally missing out.

Instead of using my phone on the mrt to and from work, I’ve been reading! My Kindle Fire has been invaluable this past week and I’ve gone through so many more books than usual. I’ve always had a book with me, but I didn’t realise how much reading time I lose when I pause after a chapter to check my phone (and end up using it for half the ride). I’m pretty sure that I’ve finished one or two more books than usual which makes me and my TBR list very happy.

I’ll be away in the coming weekend so the next update post will probably be on Monday or Tuesday. I’ll also be going on a weekend trip, so let’s see how that affects my phone usage.