- Welcome to The Journey.
Today we're gonna talk about
four reasons why you need a digital detox.
And you.
Alex, come on.
- What?
- So how long can you last
without actually checking your notifications?
And if the thought of getting a text
and maybe you can't look at it right away
and you break out in a cold sweat,
uh news alert!
You might need a digital detox.
- Yeah I like to call it "getting lost in the feed".
But of course there's always gonna be upsides
to your phones, the digital side of things,
there's efficiency, communication,
or you know watching funny videos for hours on TikTok.
- TikTok, all the rage.
And I get it!
'Cause like, think about notifications
when it comes to my calendar, my schedule,
even my social life,
like everything is on my phone. - Everything.
- To know what I'm doing, when I'm doing it,
and how often I'm doing it.
And then you got social media in there.
- Stressful.
Coming up with a perfect caption is exhausting.
- You should see Alex come up with a caption.
(laughs)
- My caption game is weak.
- It takes her like 10 minutes
I bet your screen time is insane.
- Yeah well we'll get to that later.
- [Emma] (laughs)
- It's easy to think that only people
who are absolutely addicted to their phones
24/7 need a digital detox,
but really this can be beneficial for anybody
just to take a step away, get a breather,
so that you're not getting constant notifications
and everything's crazy.
- Yeah. And studies show when you actually take this detox
and step away from the phone or the computer,
in the long-term it helps with your sleep,
because if you're on it too much
it will affect your self-esteem, your productivity,
and even your social life.
Like I find it pretty annoying when I'm out with my friends
and one of my friends is just glued to their phone.
It definitely gives me a bad aftertaste.
- Yeah there's nothing worse than that.
- Yeah.
- Now don't worry,
you don't have to live off the grid forever,
it'll be okay.
You can just do it temporarily and as Emma mentioned,
there are a lot of benefits to doing this.
- Oh yeah.
And I know it can be hard,
especially right before you go to bed because
maybe for you to unwind is
that time of day that you check your social media,
or look at the news on your phone,
or maybe you even use a fan app on your phone.
- You taught me that.
- I did, yeah.
I love that sound just before you go to sleep.
But either way you do want to just separate that time
and just be mindful of it.
- And that brings us to our first benefit:
you're gonna sleep better.
So everyone has seen the night mode now on iPhones,
that's really a huge wake-up call to that blue light
that's coming from your iPhone.
- Oh yes. - Switch it on over
to night mode. - Yes.
- Makes you feel a little bit better,
but it shows you how much your eyes are straining
looking at those blue lights all day
with everything you do,
so it's gonna help you
process that information a little bit better
and sleep better.
- Now let's talk about mental health.
There's definitely been signs of
people using social media more
and their mental health being affected by it.
So for example, seeing anxiety, narcissism,
depression, and it's not really too much of a surprise,
because I mean we're guilty of it, right?
You look at someone else's life
and what they're doing in that moment,
and you compare which only sets you up
for a negative domino effect in the brain.
- Exactly I mean comparing yourself on social media,
keep in mind everyone's social media platform
is just a highlight of their life, it's a highlight reel.
- Yeah.
- So you're not seeing all the downsides
so it's not really fair to compare yourself to the best,
you know maybe even fake portrayal of people's lives.
- Which is easier said than done, right?
- True.
- 'Cause literally we'll say this right now
and I guarantee at some point we'll be on our phones
looking at someone's Instagram and being like,
"Wow, Mexico looks nice".
I'm in Seattle, it's freezing.
- The third benefit of a digital detox
is increased productivity.
So it sounds kind of counterintuitive because
when you're on your phone you feel like you're really
getting a lot done,
you're checking emails. - I feel efficient.
Ordered a Lyft. - Exactly.
- Order Grubhub. - Yeah.
- Check Instagram, check email,
the list goes on. - Like I got so much done.
Exactly.
But the truth of the matter is
whenever you're actually trying to accomplish a task
and you're constantly being bogged down by
notifications, and alerts, and everything's important,
you're just being distracted from the actual task at hand.
- Last benefit: you can reconnect,
you can actually be present,
be in the moment, be here.
- Yeah rather than recharging your phone,
recharge yourself.
- Oh that's catchy, I can see t-shirts being made.
- Trademarked.
- (laughs)
- All right so we're all talk right now Emma,
how are we actually going to implement this?
- So you gotta identify two variables starting with
how much time do you spend online? On your phone?
And the good news is, or maybe bad news,
'cause here comes the truth,
you can see, if you have an iPhone,
you can actually see your screen time.
Yeah, let's see.
- Let's take a look. - Moment of truth Alex.
- This is gonna be a scary wake up call.
- I'm a little scared.
- It's okay. So you go to settings in your phone,
this is if you have an iPhone,
you go to screen time. - Screen time.
Holy smokes!
- All right, all right,
so my daily average: 4 hours, 48 minutes,
up 7% from last week,
that's 'cause I was in Mexico last week.
- [Emma] Why don't you detox when you're in Mexico?
- [Alex] I did, I'm up 7% this week.
- [Emma] Oh than when you were on vacation.
- [Alex] Exactly. - [Emma] Okay. Got it.
- [Alex] And then if you jump in to see all activity,
you can actually break down
where you're spending the majority of your time.
So oh my goodness.
- [Emma] It's mostly social media.
- [Alex] 5 hours and 42 minutes
on Instagram. - [Emma] Shocking.
- [Alex] Yikes.
An hour 27 on TikTok.
This seems about accurate.
- So from there you can see not only
how you're spending time,
but how much time you're spending online.
So that's the first variable.
And second variable: you can actually see
which of your apps you're using the most.
So with Alex over here.
- Exactly, Instagram. - Social networking.
- Right, all the social networking ones.
And it kind of gives you an idea
of if you're going to take a digital detox,
you know if I were to
delete Instagram off my phone, I'd be saving about
five hours. - Look at all that time.
Back, all that time's back.
- The next ground rule you can implement is
no screens after dark.
We sound like our moms right now,
but it is a really great way
to kind of settle down for the night
whether that's your TV screen,
your phone screen, all of that helps
keep you awake. - iPads.
- Exactly.
We talked earlier about how much
it benefits your sleep cycle
so it's a really great way to start to decompress,
maybe read a book instead.
- I love that, absolutely.
Turn off the iPad, binge watch that show somewhere else.
When it's time for bed, lights out, get a good night's rest
and it will overall help you, again, with that detox.
Also if you are just having an honest moment with yourself
and you're like, look, I can't completely detox, Emma.
Just go into your notifications,
and turn some of those off.
- Baby steps. Baby steps. - Baby steps.
Like for me, I have a lot of notifications for my work
so during the work day I just know at a glance
right when it's happening in real time
like when someone's sending a message on Microsoft Teams,
when someone sends me an email, when someone Slacks me,
there's a lot of things going on.
But after work hours?
Off, off, off.
Don't need those, especially when it's time to go to sleep.
- All right so thanks for watching,
be sure to like this video,
and comment down below,
let us know what your screen time is,
may be a little scary, let's make it a competition.
Who has the highest score?
- And be sure to subscribe to our channel
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when the next episode comes out.
This is The Journey.