Hey there! I hope your summer is going well and you’re getting to go on some adventures! I just went on a trip to Devil’s Tower in Wyoming. Did I sleep in a luxurious hotel? No, I slept 3 nights in a teepee! I had never done that before and as much as I love camping, I usually don’t sleep that well in a tent. BUT I slept like a champ in the teepee. The cloth walls made it quiet and soothing, as opposed to usual loud tent material. I hiked for hours everyday, did some steep climbing and cave-finding. I’m sure that helped with the sleeping 🙂

The No Cellphone Plan

The plan was to not use my cell phone at all. But I for sure had to take some pictures. I set a rule that I wouldn’t use my phone for anything else.

Like so many others, I consider myself to be addicted to my phone. I don’t beat myself up about it but I definitely spend time mindlessly scrolling just about every day.

Four Surprising No-Cellphone-Findings

1. I believe that so many of us use phones and other vices as a distraction from our feelings. While not being on my phone, I felt my feelings more. When I was upset, happy, or just thinking about something, I had to sit with it. Rather than use my phone or computer to take me away from my feels, I faced them head on. I was left with being entirely in the moment.

2. There are wonderful people in my life who text me regularly and if they didn’t hear from me for a few days, would probably grow concerned. I told a couple people that I was going off-line for a few days. But rather than me having strong urges to use my phone, I  was more-so worrying that other people were worried about not hearing from me! To my surprise when I turned my phone back on, I hardly had any messages 😀

3. Another surprising finding is that …it was easy! Maybe since I grew up without cell phones and didn’t have one until I was 18 and even then they weren’t SMART… helped me to easily live my days like that again. I’m so grateful that I had a childhood almost entirely without screens. Growing up in the 90s meant that I grew up without cell phones and tablets. We didn’t get a computer until I was 14. We watched TV but not always every day, on nice days my dad made sure we played outside.

4. Something I never expected it this last one.  When I turned my phone off and put it away, I felt a big sense of relief. It was relief from my calendars, emails, extensive to-do lists, social media notifications, and responding to potentially urgent messages from work or family.

How This Affects Me Now

Now that the trip is over, I have continued most of my usual cell phone usage. But I have a new awareness of it. I catch myself mindlessly scrolling and then remind myself of how good it felt to be phoneless. 

I never thought I’d be able to succeed at using my phone less. Now that I have done this little experiment I can clearly see how much of a time waster these things are. When you find yourself thinking you don’t have enough time to do all the things you want to do, take a look at how much scrolling or email checking you do everyday! Check out these stats and read on to learn more about cell phone addiction from Bankmycell.com.

“Is Cell Phone Addiction Real? Here Are The Facts

The average smartphone user checks their device 47 times a day / 17,155 a year.

Conversation killer!

85% of smartphone users will check their device while speaking with friends and family. 80% of smartphone users check their phone within 1 hour of waking or going to sleep, 35% of which will do within 5 minutes. 47% of smartphone users have attempted to limit their usage in the past – only 30% of which feel they were successful.

Smartphone Addiction Definition

The official name for smartphone addiction is Nomophobia which is defined as having a fear of not being with your phone. Cell phones have been around for years though, so why the sudden increase in personal dependence? Well quite simply, it’s defined by the nature of the content on the device… we’re talking internet, social networks, apps, video, music and so on. Popular impulse driven triggers: Social media networks and relationship driven content. Overexposure to information and data e.g. games, surfing, apps. Internet pornography, cybersex and dating apps. Shopping, gambling, stock trading, and auctions.

How Phone Dependence Can Negatively Impact Our Life

All the research and studies we examined found that a phone usage dependence can impact both physical and mental health attributes of your daily life.

Anxiety – Simply having your phone near you will decrease your productivity, the impact snowballs with the level of the users’ addiction.

Stress – Higher stress levels were found in business orientated roles where work life is connected to the personas device e.g. emails

Narcissism – People on their phones who get addicted to social media will begin to display self-absorption traits derived from posting constantly about their life or selfies.

Depression and loneliness – mainly stemming from people on their phones with high social media use (higher numbers in teens).

Attention deficit disorder – The flow of information can impact the brains’ ability to stay focused on one task for more than a couple of minutes

Sleep deprivation – Impacting your sleep can have long-term mental health, memory and learning skills. By the time you finish reading this you might want to sell your iPhone or trade in your cell phone and get an old brick phone, but later on, in chapter 5 we’ll cover how to break up with your phone using methods to reduce use.

Warning Signs & Smartphone Addiction Symptoms

Do you get any of the following feelings or feel any of these statements relate to you? These are all the most common observations of people with various levels of smartphone addiction. Do you have difficulty completing chores or work due to concentration issues? Seclusion from family and friends or using your phone when in conversation Do you mask your smartphone use, e.g. sneak off to the bathroom at work? Do you worry that you’re missing out on something when you’re not with your phone? Do you feel anxious or irritable if you’re not with your phone? Do you have sleep problems?

Digital Wellness Coach Expert Opinion: BankMyCell asked Anya Pechko, a Digital Wellness Coach from New York and founder of Project Be what she thought of the current state of smartphone additction:

In my practice, I often talk about our cognitive and critical thinking being negatively impacted by technology. I am also a very very big proponent of boredom, I view boredom as our 6th sense.  An internal entertainment system if you will, which we use to entertain ourselves and others. Its basic humanity.  We now have outsourced this to our phones and so we depend on them to be entertained and stimulated.  And of course, don’t even get me started on the oxytocin vs dopamine. I also think that technology impacts generations in very different ways, right now I am concentrating on children.  Since the cortex doesn’t fully mature till 25 or so, their tiny brains are flooded  with dopamine which early studies show is correlated to premature aging (Parkinsons and Alzheimers…) “

(Source: https://www.bankmycell.com/blog/smartphone-addiction/)

⇩ More photos from my trip ⇩