Let's be honest here. Your addiction to your phone is
taking away so much from your life.
You're done waking up every morning only to scroll through
social media and fry your brain. It's messing up your focus and
wasting time from the already limited time you have on this
earth. And if you want to stop this
addiction this Ramadan and beyond, you've come to the right
place. Assalamu Alaikum, it's your host
Nosheen. And welcome to another episode
of Journey to Jenna, a podcast curated to helping you become
your own dream girl. This is the 6th episode of the
Ramadan series and we are going to talk about phone addiction or
honestly, screen addiction in general.
Doesn't have to be just your phone and how to stop it.
Let me put this into perspective for all of you so you can
understand the severity of the situation.
Let's say you spend exactly 4 hours on your phone every single
day just scrolling or doing useless things.
That's almost 61 days out of the 365 days in the year that you're
wasting by being on your phone. And I know a lot of you guys
spend way more than that. So let's just put that number a
little bit higher. Let's say you spend exactly 6
hours a day on your phone. That's a little over 91 days,
almost 100 days. Guys like that's that's crazy.
You know how much time you're wasting doing absolutely nothing
for your life? It takes 20 hours to build a new
skill. It takes 480 hours or 20 days to
get to an intermediate level in a new language.
What are we doing with our lives?
And this addiction is something that honestly is so easy to fall
into. I used to go my phone for 7-8
hours a day. Sometimes it would go up to 12
hours and thinking back, what exactly was I doing on my phone
for that long? What was I doing with my life?
Like it generally blows my mind how I let myself to get to a
point that low and unproductive and think a lot for my mother
because she has always been on me about my screen time.
And, you know, just saying how I was going on my phone too much
and how it was bad for me as a mother does and as all teenagers
do. I didn't listen.
I didn't believe her when she said it was bad.
But after a while I realized, like, wait a minute, why is she
low key? Right?
And Ma, if you're listening to this, I'm sorry for not
listening to you sooner. I would wake up in the morning.
First thing I did is destroy my brain by scrolling through
social media, Snapchat, then Instagram, then Tiktok, looking
at posts, stories and videos. Then when I was finally done
with that and I did get up, I did my work and I was not able
to focus because my brain was genuinely so fried.
Other than that, I had a lot of things I wanted to do, but I
would always put them off. And instead of just, you know,
working towards them, I would go in my bed and scroll because
that was more comfortable than actually getting up and working
towards my goals. And not even that I would scroll
so much that I would get bored of it and then binge movies
hours on end. And then when I was done with
that, I would go on YouTube, like the way I was living was
completely unproductive. And that feeling of how fried my
brain felt like I genuinely never want to feel something
like that again because of how horrible it felt.
And at some point I realized that I was spending so much time
doing absolutely nothing with my life.
I was doing a lot of nothing and I decided that I was fed up with
living the way I was, with being as unproductive as I was being.
My detriment was being caused by myself, like I am in full
control of my life and this was completely my own fault.
So I started to make a conscious effort to change that, to lower
my screen time and to do other productive things in its place,
and it really wasn't easy at first.
This cues in the start of me watching YouTube videos on how
to stop going on my phone as much.
And guys, I've tested a lot of different tips over the years,
so I found what actually works, what doesn't work, and I've just
learned a lot along the way, so I have a lot to share with you
guys now. My screen time averages from one
to four hours on a daily, and I think the highest I've had for
the past few weeks was like 5 hours.
But most of the time is honestly spent on work since I do work
for my phone. That's one of the bigger
misconceptions that I've had that I have to learn from.
It's not about how much time you spend on your phone, it's what
you do while you're on it. At the start, I had this huge
misconception, as I said, where I thought the lower my screen
time, the better. I was like, I want my screen
time to be under one hour every day, and if it went above that
hour, I would feel super bad about it.
But I realized that for me that wasn't realistic because I do
content creation. I also work from my phone.
It's not how much time I spent on it, rather what I do while
I'm on it. If I'm spending four hours on
Instagram scrolling through reels, yes, that's unproductive.
But if my total screen time one day is 4 hours, and that's
broken down to checking and responding to my emails,
responding to work, DMS, filming content and reading because I'm
a book early, that's honestly fine.
Like, it's the apps that are taking away from your life.
Like social media that we need to focus on and furthermore how
you use them because you could use social media to further your
life or you could use it to waste half your day.
Actual process of stopping your phone addiction is something
that's going to take a while. You have years of social media
consumption behind you and that's altered your brain to
crave instant gratification and you're going to want to give in
and go on social media to give yourself that.
I talked about this in episode 4 on the topic of discipline and
this 100% carries on over here to this topic.
So I want to repeat what I said there.
Fast food, one click shopping, endless social media scrolling.
We live in a world that is designed to give us what we want
right now. The issue with this is that
focusing solely on instant gratification stops us from
being able to achieve actual meaningful goals.
And if you're constantly looking for the next week thing to give
you that dopamine rush, how will you ever find the time and focus
to do things that you actually care about and want to do within
your life? You're going to have to choose
between the pain of discipline and the pain of regret.
Do you want to waste more time going on your phone and doing
nothing and look back in a few years and think I wish I would
have done more? Or do you want to look back and
be happy that you disciplined yourself to not give into your
want of instant gratification? The choice is 100% yours.
One of the big questions here is why do we have this addiction?
Where does it stem from? And it's important to know your
own Why? Because that leads to knowing
how to fix it. The first reason is dopamine.
Dopamine is the chemical behind our feelings of pleasure and
reward, and social media platforms and many other apps on
your phone such as games are designed to trigger this reward
system and keep you hooked on the app.
Some platforms use algorithms to personalize your feed, such as
Instagram and TikTok, which means that you're shown content
that will likely get a reaction out of you.
And then when you're scrolling through endless feeds of
perfectly created photos and entertaining videos, your reward
system is activated, which keeps you on the app wanting more.
And also on top of that, that little ping or vibration when
you get a new notification is another dopamine trigger.
It creates a sense of anticipation and urgency, like I
need to see what this notification is.
Did someone text me? Did someone like my story?
Did someone like the new post I posted?
And it pulls you back to your phone to see.
All of these different things are keeping your brain in that
cycle and triggering more and more dopamine release.
Over time your brain has started to correlate your phone with
dopamine. So whenever you want dopamine,
you automatically grab for your phone.
It's a reoccurring cycle and this cycle of instant
gratification also trains your brain for short bursts of
pleasure, which makes it harder to focus on the long term goals
that require sustained effort. And this is one of the big
things that this can affect negatively in the long term.
The constant new information and quick hits of pleasure shorten
your attention span. We see terminology like TikTok
brain being used nowadays and it really is such a big issue.
All the short form content that we're consuming is minimizing
our attention span to like 810 seconds and that is honestly so
bad. The second reason is because you
don't have any real sense of direction in your life.
You don't have a plan. You don't have goals.
You're wasting time on this addiction because you don't know
what to do with your life or with your time, because you have
no clear goals or purpose set out.
Your free time has become time for you to aimlessly scroll.
It makes you feel like you're doing something because you're
constantly in taking information or news.
You have a sense of busyness and engagement, but really you're
just sitting there wasting your time scrolling.
You could also be using it to ward off feelings of boredom,
since it is the perfect distraction.
It's the perfect way to entertain yourself.
You could also be subconsciously using your phone to
procrastinate, making bigger decisions because of the
discomfort there is, and taking action towards actual meaningful
goals and creating a more meaningful future.
The third reason is FOMO, Fear of missing out.
We got so used to seeing what's going on in everyone else's
lives that we feel the need to open social media every hour to
see what this friend posted on their story or who posted on
Instagram. It could also be the same thing
to text. You don't want to miss when
someone texts you, girl. It's fine to respond back a
little bit late. You don't need to be on your
phone waiting for someone to respond so that you can text
back in like 5 seconds. There are plenty of other
reasons, these are just a few. But again, find out your why and
you will find what areas you need to specifically focus on to
overcome this. Now let's go over a few changes
to make in your phone settings to make not going on your phone
a little bit easier. Number one is turn on screen
time. By doing this, you'll be able to
see a report that shows how much time you use your device, and
then you can also see more specifically which apps and
websites you use, and how long you spend on all of them.
You can also set limits on apps. Once you hit that limit, the app
gets grayed out or it restricts certain futures, which forces
you to take a break. You can always press the ignore
button on these, but it does act as a really great first barrier.
Just to remind you, hey you've been on this app for a while,
it's probably a good idea to get off.
You can also schedule downtime periods, which is basically when
all of your apps are restricted except for calls and maybe
essential apps like maps. I like to set this for evening
so I'm less tempted to go on my phone at night time.
If you do have an Android, there are apps that you can download
to do this and #2 is turning off your notifications.
One of the main reasons we go to pick up our phones is because of
notifications that we get. We feel the need to check every
time we hear that buzz. All of my notifications are off
besides my banking app messages, but only for my family, my
prayer app, canvas, and then a few of my work apps.
This has genuinely helped me so much because I basically took
away all of the background noise that was there and it's only the
important stuff that I have now. We all have a different balance,
so find what works for you. I'd say definitely 100% turn off
your notifications for your social media apps.
That's not a need. Keep on notifications for the
important things like your school work, prayer, etcetera.
And on top of that, don't be afraid to put your phone on Do
Not Disturb. If you want to make certain
people be able to bypass this to text you like your parents, that
is an option that you can use so you don't have any excuses there
#3 is turning off Race to Wake. This is the future that allows
your phone to turn on whenever you pick it Up is also the
future that allows your phone to turn on whenever you get a
notification. To turn this off, you go to
settings, then go to Display and Brightness.
Scroll down a little bit and it should say race to wake.
You're going to press the toggle to be off.
I thought this wasn't going to work, It wasn't going to be
effective when I first heard of it, But after I implemented it,
I realized it really did help. And I was honestly surprised
because although it's like a really, really miniscule thing
to implement, it sort of forced me to be more mindful of when I
pick up my phone because I have to take that extra step and
press the power button to actually turn the screen on.
And also when I do get notifications, I have to go out
of my way to go and turn my phone on to see what the
notification is. So again, it just really forces
me to be overall more mindful of whenever I go on my phone.
Number four, make your phone black and white whenever you go
on your phone. There's so much color and
everything and that's a big factor that pulls you in when
you're on social media or playing any games.
So by turning that off, you're taking away a lot of the
interest that you have because it becomes a really dull
environment. To do this you go to
Accessibility, then press display and Settings, Scroll
down a little bit and then press color filters.
There will be a toggle future which you want to press on and
then press grayscale. Also guys, I'll have the
specifics on this, unlike the directions and everything on my
website. Just so you have directions
written down. If that helps you out, I'll have
the link to that in the description.
I tried this technique for a little while and it definitely
did keep me off my phone. There wasn't any flashing colors
and there was literally 0 dopamine that I was getting from
it. I ended up turning it off
because it was working too well. Like I generally just didn't
want to go on my phone anymore. Scrolling on social media just
wasn't appealing at all. I turned it back on a little bit
ago just to get back onto that and to try and stay consistent.
I do turn it back on when I'm Facetiming people or buying
something, or when I'm making a video to post.
But I've been trying. I feel like this is the hardest
out of all of them because it genuinely has the biggest
effect. I mean, for me, at least now
we're going to cover a few things that you can do instead
of using your phone. We have a limited time on this
earth, and we should be using that time wisely.
You don't want to be old and regret the things that you
didn't do, or the opportunities you didn't chase, or the
experiences that you missed out on.
Spend your time doing things that actually matter to you,
things that are meaningful. You can invest time into
yourself. Try out skin care and make a
routine for yourself. Journal out your feelings.
If you want to learn a new skill, go ahead and do that.
Read a book. Write a book.
If you want Paint, you can start working out.
Get a gym membership if you can. If not, go for walks around your
neighborhood. Tried a new sport?
You can also take Pilates, boxing or karate classes.
You can start a new hobby or get back into an old one that you
haven't done in a while. Try new things that you've
wanted to do for a while that are maybe out of your comfort
zone. Another really big thing is
spending time connecting with your loved ones.
Spend time talking to them. Make plans to go places
together. If you have siblings, ask them
if you want to bake something with you.
It's such a simple thing, but activities like this help in
building your relationship with people, just spending time
together and enjoying whatever it is that you're doing.
These people won't be here forever.
You don't have unlimited time so spend that limited time that you
have with them by doing things that you will actually have some
meaning to you in the future. You can also volunteer every
week somewhere. Like I would volunteer every
week at the Mustard for Sunday school and that took a few hours
of pre planning for the lesson and then it was just a nice way
to spend my Sundays since I was giving back to the community.
I also wanted to cover talking about social media and how it's
not always a bad thing to use. Like I've learned so much from
it and we should be able to use these platforms to further
ourselves, but most of the time they tend to lead to doom
scrolling or using them unproductively.
So putting in all of these countermeasures and on top of
that, being mindful of your social media consumption is
really important. When I first started this whole
thing, I decided I wanted to delay all of my social media and
after a while I came back because I realized it's how I
use it. I would still want to go through
that phase of absolutely no social media, because to help
you break out of that habit, you get to spend so much time with
yourself. It helped me become more
grounded. It helped me actually appreciate
life. Like, one of the things that I
didn't realize is how draining social media is.
And because of that experience, when I did come back to social
media, I was able to use it more mindfully.
One of the big parts of this is curating your feet to work for
you, not against you. So this means one you're
following. Go through everything and follow
anyone who isn't adding to your life.
Remove people as well. Block people if you need to.
Like I have absolutely no issue blocking anyone like it's my
phone. Why am I going to allow a random
person to make me feel bad and stress me out when I'm going on
my phone? We're not doing that.
To go through your feed and press not interested in all the
content that isn't benefiting you and then go to your search
and search of things that you want like self help content,
religious content and favorite and like a bunch of those and
this will create your feet to work for you.
That brings us to the end of this episode.
I hope you all take some positive information from this
and apply it to your life. To help you make sure to follow
my Instagram for daily motivation and to see my life.
I'll have a link to that in the description.
I'll also have a link to the Journey to General website.
There are free resources like a weekly planner and a solid
tracker that you can download and use.
I also have two Ramadan planners.
Along with that I'll post notes from today's episode that you
can use if you would prefer a written version.
Also a huge announcement. I am starting a newsletter, a
subscription that will be sending out like tips and tricks
to your e-mail and I hope all of you guys do go and subscribe.
It is linked at the bottom of the page on my website if you
want to go check that out. With that, I said I want to go
and I will and shall list you guys in my next episode.