Hey guys! For those of you who are new here, my name is Jennifer. I do
lifestyle, travel. fashion, chit-chatting type videos. So if you like my content
please do subscribe down below and join the family. What I wanted to talk about
today is the digital detox that I put myself on for like a few weeks - almost a
month - maybe that was a month - and I just kind of wanted to talk to you about what I did, why I did it and also what are the benefits and
lessons learned from doing the digital detox. In case you want to do it as well
I've got some tips that I'd love to share with you guys.
So the term "digital
detox" - what it is, in a general sense, is just a period of time where a person
just refrains from using digital devices such as smartphones laptops and so on
So, I'm using the term digital detox in a fairly loose sense of the word because I
didn't completely like stop using my smartphone and laptop and just like
stayed away from all sorts of computers or anything like that.
What I did was basically
put out a notification on whatsapp like instead of having my
normal icon I kind of took a notification that says "Jen is on a
digital detox" and on the status update I said if you guys need to contact me in
an emergency or any other way then contact me on such-and-such number.
So that was how I dealt with the social media chats.
As for Instagram I just did
not use it at all.
With Facebook, I also didn't really use that although it
wasn't really much of an issue because I don't really use Facebook anymore
because I reduce my time on Instagram I also reduce my time on and all of these
like other apps like editing apps and so even YouTube - I didn't really watch as
my youtube videos during this time
uhm..I watched a bit of Netflix but not so much.
I did it hardcore for about three weeks and in my fourth week I allowed myself
to contact certain people on whatsapp and then on my fifth week that's when I
lifted the "ban" on myself so to speak.
So what were the benefits of the digital detox?
And would I recommend it?
Yes! Absolutely a hundred percent I would
definitely recommend doing the digital detox.
It really made me a lot more
present than what I normally would be and it also really made me realize the
type of mindset that sometimes we get trapped in.
Because our phone is always
on us we will feel like there are these imagined emergencies and how responsive
you have to be with that.
And I'm not even like the most responsive person
when it comes to messaging like that um there'd be a number of friends of mine
who would tell you that I'm really bad at messaging but even then it made me
realize that this responsiveness culture it really has a negative impact on you
and how you are able to be in the present or be there.
I felt a lot more in
tuned with myself and it also allowed me that time to really introspect and see
what was going on with my thoughts.
To shout out the voices of my social world
not have anyone's voices and not have any societal expectations being
bombarded at me so that I could really reflect on my own thoughts, my own wants
my own needs and to just kind of figure it out for myself.
During this period of time,
I felt more creative.
My thoughts just became clearer
some of my writings were a lot better.
More importantly too, I think, it really
allowed me to reflect on how social media or other people's expectations or
societal expectations really affected my thoughts.
It also made me realize how
hooked I was on Instagram like every time I was on digital detox I was like
oh maybe I'll just check Instagram and I'm like -- hold on ---
I'm on digital detox, I can't do that. It's so funny how often I would reach for my phone to just
scroll through Instagram or something like that. It's so addictive.
And yes, there are beautiful pictures on Instagram but that's all they really are just
beautiful pictures. Sometimes it can be really inspiring but at other times
depending on your mental space it can also take away from you now that I've
removed myself from that situation I've noticed how it affects my self-talk and
my thought processes.
Uhm I definitely noticed that I was doing a lot less
negative self-talk.
So the biggest thing of all is that it definitely made me
more happy and more content and so I would a hundred percent recommend doing
a digital detox.
So with that being said here are some tips.
The first tip is to set yourself achievable targets. I think this goes for a lot of things in life
for whatever you want to do for example if you want to get fit or get healthier
to set yourself actually achievable targets because no one wants to have
that feeling of failing something or not doing something very well so just be
realistic about what you can and what you can't do. For me, for example, it
wasn't possible that I go completely cold turkey on like not using my phone
at all using laptops and things like that
because work was so much tied to my phone and I need to be responsive to clients.
The second thing and it's kind of related to that - to the first point -
is to give yourself an allowance.
And by that I mean to just kind of give
yourself like an amount of time to be able to check certain things so that
you're not completely out of the loop if that's what you want.
For this, I found
the feature Screen Time on the iPhone really really useful.
So with Screen Time,
you can set yourself, for example, five minutes on social media apps and
also another really good thing about Screen Time is that you can exclude certain
apps from from my screen time rule.
So once those minutes are up there's a
notification that comes up that says "Hey you've exceeded your screen time, do you
want to give yourself more time if you do enter a passcode do you want to
ignore the limit for the entire day or anything like that"
I think this feature is so great it really makes you more conscious about
the time that you are spending on your phone and I actually still use that that
feature to this day.
I've set my limit now to about 10 or 15 minutes for those
social media apps.
It also is really useful now for me that okay well I'm
gonna give myself another 10 minutes and so you are actively choosing to be on
your phone as opposed to just falling into this vortex or like rabbit hole
of just being on the phone and just scrolling through Instagram and
being on YouTube and just losing track of time completely.
The third thing is
the notifications.
So what I did was went through my notifications and basically
turned off almost all notifications so that nothing is popping up for me just
randomly like blinking off on my phone and distracting me from what I'm doing or where I am
Related to that is also the "sleep mode" function on the iPhone as well
which basically was on over time for me.
Both those things are really
useful and it keeps you more in the present and so when you're actually
reaching for your phone, you're actively reaching for your phone.
Ask
why is it that you are reaching for your phone
Is there something that's making you feel uncomfortable
and that's why you're reaching for your phone because
it is comforting or it is a distraction from your own thoughts and your own
discomfort and ..
Is that the right approach or is there something that you
can do in the time - in that time and space to address your discomforts and
address your emotions about why you feel a certain way.
Also an observation that I
made people were so tied to their phones and would reach for their phones all the time.
It really made me more conscious about how that makes me feel when they
go on their phone and also how it must make other people feel when I'm on my phone
so that is something that I'm still working on
And the last tip is to
actually just tell everyone what you're doing
First of all this makes you more
accountable to your actions, I feel, because I'm definitely the type of
person who once I say I'm going to do something I want to do that thing and
stick to it so it made me more accountable and it might work like that
for you too but the second thing is just to also set those boundaries so that
other people who know what you're doing it isn't just like coming in, you know,
disrupting what you're doing and most of the time like your friends and family
willl be super supportive of that because they know that what you're doing
is actually a really good thing and so they'll kind of like leave you alone
unless it's an emergency and respect your boundaries in that way
I hope you guys enjoyed this video and found it interesting and useful. If you did please
give this video a thumbs up and if you didn't just give it a thumbs down so
that I know what kind of content you guys like to see.
Leave a comment in the
comment section down below if you're planning on doing a digital detox
if you've already done one, what tips would you guys give to other people who want to do a digital detox
So anyway guys, it's been fun chatting,
I'll see you in the next one
Byeee!