Should You Take A Break From Your Phone?

About two years ago, I was going through a difficult time. After a midlife divorce, I was spending more time alone than I would have liked, even though I’m close to my family and friends. I felt lonely. The weekends were especially tough, because that’s when most of my friends hung out with their families or spouses.

During one of those weekends, I noticed that every time I felt lonely, I reached for my iPhone—as if this 3 x 6-inch device could soothe my pain, or at least distract me from it. Maybe there would be a text or an email! Maybe someone “liked” my post on Facebook! But then I realized, “Wow, this is a lousy—and unhealthy—way to cope,” and decided to take a break.

Since then, I’ve gone screen-free nearly every Sunday, taking what’s often called a “digital detox.” I keep my smartphone on when I travel (so my college-age kids can reach me), and occasionally I turn my desktop on for work. But for about 90% of Sundays each year, I go without. No cell phone. No computer. No emails or texts. I have an old-fashioned landline, so if I want to communicate with someone, I call.

The first day I tried this, I woke up feeling like I’d lost a limb. I liked to check the weather first thing and maybe use a meditation app. As a writer, I also spend eight hours a day, five days a week, staring at a computer. It felt weird not having something to turn to when I wanted to know very important information, like with whom the film director Greta Gerwig is partnered or how many ounces there are in a cup.

But after I got used to the feeling, I realized that my screen-free time gave me the room to create a deeper connection, one that’s crucial to emotional health: the connection to myself.

Most of us go through our days completely distracted. The average American spends more than four hours a day on their mobile device. We check our phones about 52 times a day. According to a 2016 report by Deloitte, 61% of us check our phones within five minutes of waking up.

That leaves us almost no time to check in with ourselves. “We’re always responding, responding, responding,” says Nancy Colier, LCSW, a New York–based psychotherapist and author of The Power of Off: The Mindful Way to Stay Sane in a Virtual World. “One of the things that’s disappearing in terms of a relationship with ourself is asking the questions: What do I want in this life? What makes a day meaningful to me? What engages me, fills my bucket?”

It’s even more difficult to create a healthy sense of self when we’re always comparing ourselves to others on social media. A 2015 study found that people who used Facebook passively (that is, scrolling without commenting or posting) for just 10 minutes felt 9% worse at the end of the day, because they felt envious of others.

Of course, we’re often comparing ourselves to a distorted reality. “No one shows their worst self on Instagram or Facebook, right?” says Northwell Health senior psychologist Jessy Warner-Cohen, PhD. “We’re not comparing ourselves to other people’s reality. We’re comparing ourselves to their ideal, and that sets the stage for trying to meet a standard that doesn’t actually exist.”

In addition to making us envious, technology can also leave us sleep-deprived. A 2015 Harvard Medical School study found that reading on a blue light-emitting device (such as a phone or iPad) in the hours before bed caused participants to take longer to fall asleep, experience reduced melatonin levels, and feel less alert the next day. “If you’re not sleeping well, your capacity to process everything else—emotions, thoughts, and situations—gets diminished,” says Warner-Cohen. “Sleep is an important part of how we’re able to regulate our thoughts and emotions.”

But most of all, when we’re constantly distracted, we lose the capacity to feel what’s going on inside us, cues that we need for our emotional (and physical) health. This could include fear, anger, and sadness, as well as joy. “We’re incredibly gifted as a culture at talking about our feelings and interpreting and analyzing them,” says Colier. “But we still don’t know how to sit in our feelings. And the only way to recover and heal and change our feelings is to feel them, not try to outrun them.”

I experienced that myself when I started my screen-free Sundays. Because I could no longer distract myself with a smartphone, I had to feel my loneliness. But that also presented an opportunity: I learned to be kind to myself and value my own company. I also learned that I needed to fill some of that time doing activities that bring me joy. I read novels now (and can concentrate long enough to do so). I cook. I go on hikes with friends. And sometimes, I just have to be comfortable being lonely. I have found that when I can stay present with a difficult emotion—instead of trying to run from it—that’s when it starts to change.

Taking a break every Sunday gave me a chance to break my addiction to my devices, so that I have a healthier relationship with technology throughout the week. How can you give yourself the same restorative, screen-free time?

• Set aside times throughout the day to shut your phone off, such as at dinner. Warner-Cohen says that disconnecting a full day a week might be too challenging for some people, especially younger ones, so this is a good alternative.
• Try taking small trips, such as to the grocery store or to walk your dog, without your phone.
• Do a tech check: Colier suggests that every time you pick up your phone, ask yourself, “WAIT,” which stands for “Why Am I Teching?”
• When you get together with friends, ask everyone to turn off their phones. “You’d be shocked at how often people are delighted by this,” Colier says.

It’s unrealistic to think that we can escape technology completely—or that we’d even want to. Tech has made our lives richer in so many ways. I love being able to see my kids’ faces when we talk on FaceTime. I revel in the fact that I can find obscure information quickly. And I love that moment when my Fitbit buzzes, telling me I’ve reached 10,000 steps. The best approach to technology, says Colier, “is making a commitment to be conscious about how we’re using it.”

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