I’m doing a final edit of this post over breakfast at the hostel I’m staying at in Reykjavik. To the right of me is a girl who smiled over as she sat down but ever since has been glued to her iPhone. To the left of me is a guy who literally hasn’t lifted his eyes from his smartphone even as he gathered together his breakfast from the (delicious) buffet. Impressive. I’m in the middle, tapping away on my laptop, iPhone charging next to me…
We’re all three of us physically in one place but mentally we’re all somewhere else entirely. It seems a shame that we’re missing out on you know, being present, enjoying our breakfast and, maybe, actually talking to one another, while we keep up with the online lives of people who (certainly in the case of my friends and follows) run the gamut of those we know well, all the way to people we’ve never even met.
I started working on this post earlier in the week, back in London, after my sister and I were chatting about our (or really my) digital habits, which have perhaps gotten a little out of control. Anna suggested I keep a diary detailing how frequently I’m online and so following is a snapshot of my digital life on an average day…
6.30am Wake up. Reach for my phone, which is charging beside my bed. Reply to a couple of WhatsApp messages I’ve received overnight. Check my Sleep Cycle stats – they’re not very good. Check Instagram – like various pictures that friends in Australia and LA have posted while I was sleeping. Check Facebook – click on several stories posted by US-based health websites I follow. Check Twitter. Book myself into a lunchtime yoga class via an app on my phone. About half an hour after I’ve woken up I finally get up.
7.30am Check my morning RMS post has gone live. Read my daily and weekly horoscope on the US Elle website. Apparently I need a calm Yoda-like figure in my life.
8am Post a link on Facebook to my morning RMS post. Resist the urge to check Facebook again. Every half an hour or so check post for comments and reply as they come in.
8.30am Post a picture on Instagram. Check my feed and like various pictures posted by UK-based friends who are up and about and posting already. Check #iceland and #reykjavik to see if there has been any Northern Lights action overnight. There hasn’t.
9am – 12pm Spend the morning working on a fashion post for RMS. Find myself opening emails as they reach my inbox, which often leads me to click on a link, and then perhaps check one or more of the blogs I have bookmarked, forgetting momentarily or sometimes for longer, what it was I was actually doing. Find myself absentmindedly checking my Instagram feed at regular intervals throughout the morning.
12pm Realise I’m going to be late for yoga if I don’t leave the house immediately. Jump on my bike, which gives me twenty minutes of phone-free time.
12.20pm Lock up my bike and check my phone as I walk to the studio. I’ve received several work-related emails during my journey. Roll out my mat and reply to emails until the last possible moment. Put my phone in my bag, making sure it’s on silent, but not switching it off because, you know, it takes AGES for it to power back up and I don’t have that kind of time to waste.
1.35pm Class over, I put my mat away and, like everybody else, immediately check my phone, shattering the calm we’ve worked so hard for over the past hour.
I stop taking notes at this point. Suffice to say things continued along a similar vein for the rest of the day. So what did I learn? That keeping a diary of my online habits made me think twice about checking social media feeds and clicking on links (some of the time). I was surprised by how frequently I found myself absently mindedly checking Instagram in particular. And I couldn’t help but wonder how much more time I’d have on my hands if I didn’t constantly distract myself throughout the day. While I don’t plan to throw away my phone, put myself on a regime of checking email just once a day or disable the internet for eight hours while I work (it would be pretty hard to do my job without it) it’s clear that I need to put my phone away once in a while. In fact tonight I plan to sit at the bar in my hostel without a phone – or a book – order dinner and talk to whoever sits next to me.
Do you spend too much time online? What sites and apps are your biggest distractions? Have you ever put yourself on a digital detox? How did it go? Do share below!
This site is certainly one of my biggest distractions…. thanks 😉
Sometimes at home of an evening my hubby and I are sat on the sofa, him on his laptop – me on my ipad with the TV blaring sat in silence … sad isnt it?!
Apologies Victoria! I’m guilty of double and sometimes even triple screening – iPhone, iPad and Mac all on the go at once…
I’ve recently got back from the US and stayed at a friend’s house. He didn’t have wifi and after the initial shock I actually found it quite liberating to not feel tied to my phone! I saw new places, made friends and generally had a great time 🙂
Don’t get me wrong I missed not being able to email the boy at home, but for the most part it was wonderful to feel totally immersed in a new place 🙂
No wifi, I’m not sure I could cope Charlie! Joking. Sort of!
Since getting a new faster smartphone earlier this year (and finally getting the wifi working properly at home) I’ve found myself wasting up to 40 mins in bed in the morning checking instagram, FB, blogs and email, to the point that I’m then rushing around and the poor dog’s walk is getting shorter and shorter. I’m not so bad at work now, but my work does require me to answer to emails, and I try only to check FB every few hours. I’m tempted to try a digital detox, and get back into a good book. Hubby and I try to eat our dinner together at the table most nights, and phones/laptop/tv stay off during this time. it’s nice to reconnect with each other, and really, you don’t “miss” anything on FB or instagram. I think I’ll start leaving my phone somewhere else and getting an old fashioned alarm clock to get out of this morning ritual of wasting time until I’m then running late! Interesting post x
It’s crazy isn’t it M-J, I must waste a similar amount of time, unless I’m booked into an early yoga class in which case I have to be out of the door and don’t have time to scroll, like, etc. I must get an alarm clock too (it’s often one of the suggestions to help insomnia and mine is back and worse than ever!). The only thing is I find the tick of the old fashioned ones keeps me awake…
I loooove this post! I keep on thinking about a digital detox! Facebook and Instagram are the biggest killers to me! Insane! I hate them. Well I like Instagram but dislike Facebook more and more. I tried to have a digital detox at night and left my phone downstairs for a few nights to avoid the phone check before bed and first think in the morning BUT my husband was taking his phone in the bedroom because he listens to the radio while he sleeps (don’t ask). Which led him to sometimes answering a whatsapp message and quickly checking facebook and then I gave up and brought my phone back in the bedroom.
I am convinced my life would be much more exciting without my phone and my laptop.
I left facebook in the end! Realised it was a drain on my time that didn’t actually give anything back. But I really love Instagram, not sure I could do the same for that…
I couldn’t leave Instagram either Anna, but perhaps I could check it less often…
I left Facebook too Anna a couple of years ago. I felt like facebook was a place where people were showing off how cool their life was. And then realised I was missing out on loads of things. Like a friend getting engaged!! And as my family lives in another country it is so much easier to share photos of kids… So I came back…
That’s my problem Marine, if I wake up in the middle of the night I check my phone for messages and often end up replying to them and then that’s it, I’m awake for a couple of hours.
Hahahaha exactly!! Checking your phone in the middle of the night = Not going back to sleep so I stopped that. But still my phone is the first thing I look at when I wake up in the morning… Sad… Poor husband…
My problem too – that’s why I have banished the phone and just put an alarm clock on my Christmas list for when I need it. I find I sleep so much better and if I do wake, I almost instantly get back to sleep because I haven’t ‘reactivated’ my brain!
My boyfriend and I just replaced our phones etc in our room with an old-fashioned alarm clock. Problem is it’s not old-fashioned enough and we don’t quite get how to work it! So our phones now sit outside the bedroom door as a precaution…
I find walking my dog a good time to try to switch off – I try as bes tI can to leave my phone at home for his evening walk. But like everyone these days I’m way WAY too consumed by technology, despite leaving facebook and using twitter only for work purposes.
I used to track diet/fitness on my phone which seemed like a great idea, but I’de deleted all the apps in favour of a little notebook – I find once my phone is out it’s like falling down a rabbit hole of pinterest, instagram, emails, texts, whatsapp, all when I just intended to log that I’d done some circuit training!
If anyone has any rules/ideas that work for people in the real world I’d love to hear them!
Such a good plan to leave your phone at home when you walk the dog Anna. I look forward to digital free time, like a yoga class or a plane journey. That makes it sound like I’m always on a plane, I’m not, but when I am I love that I’m forced to read a book or watch a movie because I can’t check, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and so on
Great post! I find myself routinely checking and refreshing Instagram, Twitter and only really use facebook for messaging these days. As some others have commented – my husband and I will sit looking at phones / iPads of an evening and don’t actuallh speak…I find it really sad. We’ve been out a few times and phones have run out of battery – at first it was panic because we were in a new place so how would we find our way home but actually added to our day and we laughed and weren’t distracted with what was going on in someone else’s world!
At night my phone no longer comes into the bedroom, unless I need to set my alarm earlier than my husband (need to invest in a second alarm clock!) – I find this helps me switch off easier and I’m not reaching for my phone if I wake in the night.
A day time detox is definitely something I need to try!
I start to panic when my phone battery gets below 25% Rach…!
I’m going to buy an alarm clock. Right now. A pretty one that gives me a good reason not to keep my phone in my bedroom!
I should totally do that too Ann-Marie. If I can find one without a noisy tick…
I’m on my phone a lot at home but I’m not too bad in public. I used to go out for drinks with a couple of girls when I was in my last job and they absolutely amazed me at how much time they spent on their phones when we were supposed to be enjoying ourselves. If I am out with people I am there giving them my full attention. I think the problem at home is how easy it is to access things on a phone or iPad to keep yourself amused. My husband watches TV with his headphones in if he does not like what I am watching and although it solves the problem of who has the remote I sometimes like to talk about what is happening in Downton Abbey as I watch.
I’m much better when I’m out on an evening than I used to be Claire, the second an email, text or WhatsApp messages came through I would answer it, now I put my phone away and focus on the person I’m with, everyone else can wait.
Such a good post! On our honeymoon we stayed at a spiritual spa hotel in Bali where there was no wifi in the rooms or tv and the hotel discouraged use of phones and we loved it, we felt liberated! It felt so nice to wake up naturally to the sound of the waves and not instantly reach for our phones. It gave us a chance to disconnect and just spend time together talking, and both read a good book which we never have time to do at home. They had wifi in the lobby which once every few days we checked emails, social media and football scores for the husband. Somedays we felt we needed to go and check our phones but everytime we logged on we realised there wasn’t much we had missed out on, I think it was just more the fear of missing out (fomo) effect that social media has. We both said when we come home we would use our phones/iPad less and have a ‘no phones after 9pm’ rule so we both switch off before bed. However unfortunately those old habits are back and we sometimes lie in bed side by side on our phones then complain we’re tired in the mornings….*sigh*
Ooh, I like the sound of this spiritual spa hotel Steph (assuming there was yoga there too?!). Oh dear, it’s amazing how easy it is to slip back into bad habits…
I couldn’t agree more, we have a no tech rule in the bedroom (i perpetually break it) – so much so i had to buy this card for Jack a few weeks ago
http://www.urbanoutfitters.com/urban/catalog/productdetail.jsp?id=32521874&parentid=SEARCH+RESULTS#/
Instagram is sooooooooooo my vice these days!!!!!!!!
(and then all the subsequent retail pages that follow!!!!!!!!!)
Instagram’s definitely my vice too Rebecca, I find myself in the explore section, clicking on pictures I like and then finding a new blog or website to check out and that’s it, another half hour’s gone!
Eugh, my battle with having an online business and wanting to switch off is perpetual. However, I have found myself better able to monitor (and be horrified at) the amount of time I spend online since using Rescue Time app.
https://www.rescuetime.com/
In the first week I clicked up a whopping 3h 45m on Facebook. Now I can proudly say I’m down to about 47m. It’s amazing. It also lets you define what’s productive and what’s not and gives you a weekly score. As a stats whore, this makes my life.
Ooh, definitely giving this a try when I’m back in London Naomi, I’m so competitive (yes, even with myself!) I love the idea of getting my online time down to the absolutely minimum!
I’m fully aware that I spend too much time on my phone. Even at work, I find myself checking Facebook, Instagram, personal emails periodically. I actually really want to rid myself of Facebook, but it’s just… I don’t know, FOMO I guess!
Commuting is the worst – I’m plugged in with my headphones to drown out the sound of the hundreds of school kids on my train and I just automatically go to RMS, Facebook, Buzzfeed (the worst!!) and so on.
At home, I try to leave my phone to one side, but not always. And because my husband and I have very different tastes in tv shows, I end to plugged into the laptop or iPad.
However, at night, I’ve made an effort to charge my phone elsewhere in the room. It means that I’m more likely to read my book than check Facebook before bed and if I wake up in the middle of the night, I don’t reach for my phone. I’ve definitely found that I’m more rested. Just got to convince the boy to do the same!
At least commuting by tube means that I can’t check my social feeds for however long I’m underground and have to read a book Jo. I miss that I don’t do it every day (seriously!) I’m definitely reading less than I used to.
Yup it’s the age we live in isn’t it? I think for years it’s been easy to get distracted at work when you have access to the internet. I’m totally guilty of flipping between several things and forgetting what I’m doing.
I think on my phone it’s twitter and Instagram I go for most and sometimes Facbeook although honestly I don’t know why anymore. I find myself unfollowing or hiding people more and more!
A digital detox is a good idea – not sure how to implement it at home with a husband addicted to his iPad.