Ok, so before anyone gets the wrong idea, I am not on drugs. I am however addicted to something that everyone is guilty of. My Phone. I am sick of the thing. Whilst phones are unbearably reliable for our lives these days truth be told, i don’t think anyone would even know what to do in the event of a giant collapse of the phone networks and internet. how would we possibly find our way to anywhere we need to go, find out whats going on in our friends/families lives, find out whats going on in the world, listen to music or simply googling how to spell words we should know, or questions that boggle our mind. Our phones have simply taken over. i rarely go anywhere and do not see someones head in a phone. couples out for dinner one or both have heads in phones, out for dinner theres always a child/teenage with their head buried in a phone.
I am not saying i am not guilty of these crimes. I am the first to admit that out for dinner with my family when we all want to unwind and relax and my 7 year old is complaining how bored he is every 5 seconds i do let him play his switch or hand him my phone to play minecraft. And so the next generation of phone zombies is born.
I never really noticed it becoming a problem at first because i would tell myself im just checking on facebook to keep track on whats going on back home in ireland since i live in florida the last almost 7 years. yes, this is a genuine reason i feel and i can allow this one, but then it was oh i have to check instagram every 5 seconds to see if my posts got likes, and then snap chat, then emails, then it was constantly checking my phone for no reason and even still i didnt realise it was a problem. my husband had addressed it to me and just like an addict would, i would become very defensive arguing my point about not being on it that often really and that i only use it to talk to my mam on facetime or check facebook for my friends or to keep in touch with friends. the keeping in touch with friends part was BS because since i left ireland truthfully i hear from 1 friend pretty much, no i lie i hear from 1 on facebook and i am in a group chat on whats app with my school friends ( 5 of them). To keep him happy i said i would deactivate my facebook because clearly that was the issue. nope, phone still in hand. Instagram was my other vice. I loved to post my makeup pictures and see big brands i followed responding and i even had 1 of my faves send me PR packages which really was the best feeling ever. But what is the cost?
Being a depression sufferer the worst thing i can be doing is sitting around on my phone and im learning that slowly. what if i told/reminded you, back in the day we used to get by without fancy Iphones/Android phones. yes we had the basic for calling and texting, but the phones where never an obsession. they wernt a distraction to the point that our lives where being affected. they really are like drugs. we need them now like our lives depended on it. but i want to try step away. I dont think we need them as much as we think. do you remember that when we were younger and went on vacation we would have to use a real live map to get where we wanted. to read a book, we could go to the library and pick hard copy book (still my fave thing ever). Music was on records and CDS. Date nights were about spending time with the person, girls nights were about bringing a camera and taking real pictures to have developed and put in a photo album. If you didnt know how to spell something you checked the dictionary and you learned things from books or family. and you gossiped while out socialising. I miss all of these things. these real life things. Living in the moment. Being present.
Something that scared me was when i would think to myself, what did i do with my time in a day and i literally couldnt tell you. i would click onto one thing on my phone and then to the next and back again. put the phone down and then pick it back up again and click back and forth. i tried tricks like turning my phone face down, putting it on silent so i couldnt hear notifications but honestly i didnt help too much. a little maybe but nothing drastic. my life was, is, being sucked into a screen. now, nobody can say that using your phone isnt convenient it is. that is what life is about these days, convenience. nobody wants to take time to do something that with the help of a hand held device can be done in two seconds. but i mean cutting down the unnecessary usage. the usage that makes us miss so many moments in life. Let me get this point straight. im not saying give up social media altogether. im saying you dont need to check it every 5 minutes. you dont need to post something every time and thats something im trying to learn to do.
Our phones have this neat little feature now, well, the iphone does anyway. I tells us how many hours we are using our phone in a week. i was quite impressed when the first one popped up i said to aj see, thats not too bad i only had 5 hours and blah blah minutes on the phone for the week, its wasnt until the next notification that i looked at it and realised that was daily. 5 hours?!!! like WTF do i be doing to add up to that. that is shockingly bad. so now, today i am deciding i want to cut back. i want to live my life in the real world more and not as a phone addict. im not dumb, i know yes i will need it for things, duh, phone calls and messages, emails are a given. i will need the map and i use it for music but i would rather be listening to music by hooking it up to my sterio that having my head buried in the phone. i have tons of books here i want to read more. i want to take more real photos on my camera, not my phone. i want to drastically cut down on my social media time which i know will probably kill all hope of my instagram taking off much but its all about balance. i can still dedicate time to check in on my computer where i write my blogs. My goal is to get out walking more. break the habit of sitting on the couch. lose weight. spend more time falling in love with the world, spending time with people, really SPENDING TIME WITH them. I want to see that screen time % drop waaaaay down. Its completly doable. i just need to have the will power. its legit like a drug. Im tired of seeing teenagers these days being so anti social, no idea whats going on around them, i want to teach my kids a new way of seeing things and its not behind a screen.
Toodles,
K xox
The Duffy’s diary 