How they quit their phones, away from the screen| noon

Quitting your phone means filling in the gaps in time with a more valuable life.

Wen | Xiaobei

I want to stay away from my phone to some extent! The idea began during the Spring Festival.

At that time, I returned to my hometown and walked with my grandmother every day, and when I walked, my grandmother would put our mobile phones, water bottles, fruits and some snacks into a flannel bag and tie the pockets. Without my mobile phone, I had to walk and chat with her, and when my eyes were idle, I looked around.

In the trees on the left and right sides of the road there are birds smaller than a fist, jumping up and down the branches, chirping. Sometimes these birds also flew to the ground, walking on two thin calves, like military steps, straight forward, with their heads swinging left and right to prevent anyone from running over to catch them. If they are in a good mood, their steps will be particularly fast, bouncing on the ground, running out for a long distance in an instant.

The vividness of these birds made me suddenly feel the vividness of the real world.

I also began to think: What does the mobile phone really mean to us? There is no doubt that it brings a more convenient life and has become an indispensable part of our lives. However, too much use of mobile phones to fill up fragmented time also makes us less likely to face the real world, and it is easy to addictive to mobile phones.

On Douban, groups such as the "away from the screen group" and the "anti-technology control group" all advocate a certain degree of withdrawal from mobile phones. The former advocates consciously putting down mobile phones, iPads, computers, game consoles and other devices with screens and returning to the real three-dimensional space; the latter hopes to stay away from the various technologies equipped with mobile phones and reduce the degradation of life capabilities. They point to the same proposition: how in the digital age, we can live healthily with electronic devices like mobile phones.

I interviewed two "mobile phone practitioners" whose experiences we can understand what it's like to be after reducing phone use and whether that state is sustainable.

We all need to continue to fight electronic device addiction and get back to life.

Quit your phone and consciously "live" every day

Athena, 27 years old

Two years ago, because of the pressure of work, I was fascinated by the glory of kings.

At the beginning, it was only a lunch break to play, from playing from time to time, to playing like a clock every day, using the K head in the game to relieve the pressure of work. Gradually, playing games became the only way for me to relieve stress, playing at noon, playing at night, taking holidays on weekends, getting up in the morning to get an iPad and starting, lying in bed for a day, eating and drinking are takeaway. If you encounter the anti-addiction time limit, change the account and continue. Play in the dark.

I knew I was addicted, but I thought it wouldn't affect my work anyway, so I just played. Generation Z's we have long since changed instead of talking about games, it's just a normal way of entertainment. But soon, the drawbacks of gaming addiction were exposed after working from home.

In the past, when I was working in the company and entering the working atmosphere with my colleagues, I could control myself from playing games, and things would naturally be done. However, when I am working from home, once I encounter work pressure or obstacles, my hands will subconsciously play games, and an hour or two of play will pass, and the work is still in place.

I tried to uninstall the game, but after a few days, the clip of the game would flash in my head, scratching my heart and lungs to play, tangling for a while, and then downloading it back, playing and not being able to stop. This situation has been cycled countless times. I always wonder, play or not play? It seems that the two little people in the brain are fighting, which has become a new internal friction, the work efficiency has been reduced, the attention can not be concentrated, and finally will always download the game again, play two games.

Then I thought, is there any other way to divert attention? Reading is not the way to go: my attention is not as concentrated as before, and I can't read it for twenty minutes. Instead, I take my mobile phone to brush Douban, Brush WeChat, brush novels, and I can read a lot of content. As a result, brushing mobile phones instead of the glory of the king has become a new addiction. In essence, swiping the phone is no different from playing the king, it is not something I should have done, it should have been done, and time has been consumed. I just think these things are "easy" and "subconscious", at least, brushing my phone for half an hour, I can enter the work.

However, later I found that I began to have persistent insomnia. I used to have a good sleep habit, doing one-hour yoga before going to bed and reading a book for half an hour. When playing King of Kings, I know that a round is almost half an hour, so when it comes to doing yoga, I know that I must stop after playing a game, turn off the iPad, finish yoga, read the book, calm down because of the excitement or irritability of the game, and naturally fall asleep.

Compared to playing king, brushing the phone occupies more fragmented time. When doing yoga, I can't play the king, there is not enough time, but I can take advantage of the twenty or thirty seconds of the break in the middle, quickly brush some apps, see the stitches and needles to see a little thing. When the yoga is over, I will immediately pick up the mobile phone, read the content that I was interested in before, and even continue to refresh. Yoga is a meditation exercise, in this state, even if you put down the mobile phone, the mind can not be quiet. It used to take less than half an hour to fall asleep, but now it takes at least an hour.

At first, I thought that melatonin was not enough, so I went to the sun (to help produce melatonin), ate health supplements to help sleep, and found that it was useless. Increasing the amount of exercise (the habit of brushing the mobile phone has not changed), it is useless; it is useless to put white noise before going to bed and light incense to help sleep. Very late, I thought that it should be because of the blue light radiation of playing mobile phones before going to bed.

Only then did I go back and reflect on the whole process of electronic device addiction:

Initially because of stress, it gradually became a habit (behavioral and psychological). Many apps are reinforcing users' sense of immersion, for example, by giving users more time through instant feedback, social links, and providing certain rewards. Constant immersion on the basis of identity leads to inertia, subconsciously thinking of it when bored; and exclusively no longer considering other ways that can kill time. In fact, in addition to mobile phones, we obviously have many other options, such as reading a book, chatting with friends, or going for a walk.

It was only then that I realized clearly that I had to put down my phone, iPad and other electronic devices. To work, to sleep, and to not be controlled by these devices.

I started practicing turning off my phone and iPad at 10 p.m. and adjusting my yoga to 9 a.m.

At first, when I had time to spare, I felt very empty and didn't know what to do. Slowly remembering that there were still many books that I had not had time to read, I began to read them. Sometimes, with a little thought, I keep a journal. I've found that journaling is a great way to look back on the day, and I jot down what I did that day, how the work was produced, and think about how I could do better (working from home requires greater self-drive and self-discipline).

During the day, I would leave my phone in another room and my iPad for checking. However, I find that when I look up information, I tend to browse other unrelated content. I once recorded the time I spent looking through the material in half an hour, but browsing it without doing anything was 2 hours or more. I was a little intimidated.

So I went to set the iPad's "Screen Time", set 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. to "Deactivate Time", turn on the iPad during this time, and all apps will turn gray. If I check the information, I will use Tmall Genie to set a reminder of "work in 15 minutes" to help myself remember to put down the iPad. Because of the time limit, it will be more focused and efficient when looking up information.

The amount of time I had freed up was finally available to "live", off the screen: reading a book, hanging out, or clocking in to some interesting new store. That feeling of re-entering life, very good.

Of course, the process has not been smooth. Two weeks away from my phone, one day, I suddenly wanted to play Glory of Kings, I fought it with reading books and writing a diary, but at 12 o'clock in the evening, when I was about to go to sleep, I found that I still couldn't help but want to play, so I went back and played for 2 hours. When I woke up the next day, my body was particularly tired, my eyes could not be opened, and I did not return to a relatively normal working state until three or four o'clock in the afternoon. After playing the game for 2 hours, it took 7 hours to slow down. I kept this in my journal, labeled it "important," and warned myself that I couldn't download it back until I had truly stopped being addicted to the glory of kings.

Now, I practice staying away from my phone and reconnecting with the real world and feel very happy. On weekends, I would go hiking, cycling, and sometimes taking a book to the park, basking in the sun, reading a book, and buying two donuts. The whole person feels "alive" again. I like that feeling.

The temptation of addiction still exists, thinking of the king from time to time, from time to time collapsing on the bed to play with the mobile phone, unconsciously brushing the App for a while. Fighting electronic device addiction is an ongoing process, and you don't need to go from 0 to 100 at the beginning, but consciously "live" every day and let it gain day by day.

Quitting a mobile phone requires rebuilding a whole set of life order

Xiao Ran, 22 years old

I've wanted to quit my phone for a long time.

After entering the university, I was originally isolated from mobile phones, but I suddenly began to frequently contact mobile phones and indulge in the huge and complicated information flow brought by mobile phones. Because of the brushing of the mobile phone, a lot of things that I want to do have not been done. It's just that I didn't have a strong desire to "quit my phone" at the time. It wasn't until last year that I decided to go to graduate school. In addition to professional classes, I also find time to review, which forces me to restrain myself and withdraw from the habitual obsession of the mobile phone.

Over the course of a year, I tried various methods. The first stage is to uninstall the software that is easy to indulge; the second stage is to download auxiliary focus applications such as tomato todo and forest; the third stage is to make changes in hardware, replacing the main machine with an ink screen mobile phone. Each method brings some changes, such as downloading certain software, I have more time on my own; after using the ink screen phone, because it is slower to react, it becomes more difficult to browse the content in fragmented time, and I gradually change the habit of subconsciously picking up the phone.

But I also found that all of these methods are just tools, and "quitting the phone" is not an isolated act, but a need to reconstruct a new life order that no longer subconsciously picks up the phone. In the past, mobile phones filled all kinds of gaps in time. "Quitting your phone" means filling these gaps in other, more valuable ways.

Take bedtime as an example, before I would play with my phone until the last moment, but when I consciously quit my phone, I would turn it off at 10 o'clock, and I could read a paper book or printed material before going to bed. It turned out that it only took four or five hours to read a paper book with concentration. In the past, when reading books, I was constantly attracted to mobile phones, and I couldn't finish reading a book in a month.

I used to like to send circles of friends, and the interaction of friends made me very happy. There is also a kind of "business pressure" in the business circle of friends, in order to show the best side of themselves, what content to send, how to write copywriting, how to repair pictures, how to arrange pictures, who can see which people are not visible, how to interact with feedback, must be considered, which has a certain consumption of my energy and emotions. After putting down the phone, I no longer think of sending a circle of friends, all the steps and energy consumption related to it have disappeared, and I feel happy and relaxed for a long time.

So how to solve the expression of desire? Online sharing has become a dialogue with parents and friends, or a dry goods post with a clear theme and complete content on Douban. I used to be immersed in my phone and rarely chatted with the people around me. After putting down my phone, through in-depth chat, I began to understand what considerations were behind the things my parents sometimes did that seemed to me to be incomprehensible. Unlike online communication, I'm recommising and connecting with "real" people.

When I walk and stop looking at my phone, what I see and hear is full of life. When I entered the canteen, I heard the shouts of the kitchen master and the exchange of classmates; after a cold autumn night, I saw the fallen leaves on the ground and the withered branches. The details of life come through the senses, and it is no longer a state of "visible and unattainable" across the screen. This is a state of "real and alive".

Of course, this is not achieved overnight, and the inertia generated by habit will drag people back. In a sense, it's the same as quitting smoking. I read a book that talks about the process of smoking addiction:

Our bodies are originally intact. After we start smoking, we let nicotine enter the body, and once the cigarette is finished, the nicotine content in the body will drop rapidly. State of withdrawal (psychological emptiness)... Let's crave the role of nicotine... Once the cigarette is lit, the craving disappears automatically. We'll get back to normal, like we're not addicted to smoking. ...... However, this state of affairs is only temporary, and once the cigarette is extinguished, the whole cycle begins again, and the cycle repeats, never ending—unless we break it on our own initiative.

How similar this post-addiction feels to a cell phone. In the face of unpleasantness, stress, and boredom in life, brushing a mobile phone seems to be able to free ourselves, but before there is a mobile phone, our individual distinction is also complete.

Stripped of mobile phones, life will not get worse, will not keep up with the transmission of information, and will not make people incapable of coping in the face of pressure. Because of the conscious intake of information, the efficiency is higher than before; the books that used to be read by electronic devices that seem to never be memorized are now more focused and faster in the form of paper media.

After the exam, I used the electronic screen mobile phone for a while, and after playing for two days, I felt bored. I threw myself back into the arms of the refreshing ink screen and began to prepare for the next stage of work such as internships and papers. Mobile phones, for me, are no longer "afraid to play" and "can't play", but naturally "don't want to play".

——End——

The author Xiao Bei, when learning is always going on, observes individuals in the big era with curiosity.

Title image source: Visual China