Finding the balance between technology use and your life

If Simon Cowell can make do without his phone, then we should be able to do it too

A few weeks ago I found myself hunting for my iPhone in a frenzy — pulling cushions off the sofa, rummaging violently through piles of paperwork, my increasingly shallow breathing climbing higher and higher up my chest, until I was on the verge of panic.

“Help, I can’t find the object that makes me feel physically anxious, professionally inadequate, emotionally disengaged, distracted and unproductive,” my inner voice shrieked. “What am I going to do without it?”

Simon Cowell certainly answered that question recently: live a much happier, healthier life. “I literally have not been on my phone for 10 months,” the reality TV judge and producer said. “The difference it made was that I became more aware of the people around me and way more focused. It has been so good for my mental health. It’s a very strange experience but it really is good for you and it has absolutely made me happier.”

It is a bold move. Cowell’s revelations come at a time when medical professionals are also voicing mounting concerns about the effects of smartphone overuse and digital addiction.

According to data from Moment, a time-tracking app with nearly five million users, the average person spends four hours a day interacting with their phone.

We all know that habits such as checking our social media last thing at night, and “two-screening ” (flicking through our phones as we watch Netflix) aren’t healthy. Still, 79 per cent of us check apps in the final hour before bedtime, and 55 per cent within 15 minutes of waking up.

I’d always been proud of my relatively (for a millennial) moderate digital habits; I’d keep my phone on flight mode at night and for extended stretches during the weekend or on trips. I had switched off all notifications and regularly put it on silent mode.

I felt like I could reap the benefits of a smartphone, without becoming a slave to my screen.

I was wrong.

In February, I published my first book — a travel memoir — which involved a six-week flurry of book promotion across all my social media channels. I’d been dreading it, and didn’t enjoy being glued to my phone, but I felt it was necessary.

Within a week, I had practically trained myself to listen out for the whooshing sound of a WhatsApp message, the ping of an iMessage, the tinkle of a notification on Facebook messenger, the donk of an email. I could feel the rush of dopamine when I heard one of these sounds; and I felt like I should constantly be “checking ” something.

Soon, I couldn’t focus on the faces of friends in front of me as we had coffee. I felt my productivity and creativity slump, and my sensations numb; music didn’t sound as sharp and affecting, food didn’t taste as good; the blue of the sky seemed less vibrant.

I soon realized it was affecting my mental health. My anxiety levels were almost immediate — and shocking in their extremity.

These were symptoms I recognized as eerily close to depression, but I knew that it was my newly minted digital addiction that was to blame.

In her book, How to Break up With Your Phone, journalist Catherine Price spent 18 months researching habits, addiction, behaviour change, mindfulness and neuroplasticity, and developed a comprehensive strategy for how to create a sustainable, healthy relationship with her digital devices.

One of Price’s main points? Phone addiction is not our fault. This technology was specifically developed to be addictive; to man- ufacture FOMO (fear of missing out); to capitalize on our insecurity; to tap into our fears of status anxiety; to connect with the reward centre in our brains and flood our systems with hormones at the ping of a self-validating “like.”

And, for the first time, tech companies are acknowledging this.

At its recent annual Worldwide Developers Conference, tech giant Apple announced its latest iPhone operating system update, iOS 12, will include an app called Screen Time, which will help users better manage time spent on devices and improve “digital well-being.”

Earlier this month, Google unveiled a set of tools and apps geared toward creating “balance” in our digital lives, observing that 70 per cent of its users were concerned.

But there are steps that we can all take to redraw our boundaries and develop a healthier relationship with our devices. I left mine under my bed while I went off on a three-day kayaking and wildcamping trip to Sweden. Yes, it took a bit more organizing, but that time off-line made a single weekend as restorative as time at a swanky medi-spa.