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I mean, let’s be honest, this is hard. Living in today’s world, most of us live through our screens. We go to concerts and we record the entire time. We go out to eat and have to boomerang every drink and meal. We’ll spend time setting up the perfect shot to get the perfect picture to show off our “perfect” life. And honestly, it gets pretty exhausting. What happened to truly enjoying the company of your friends and family without having to show off everything you’re doing?

Being that it’s summer and most of us have weekends here and there planned for some much-needed away-time, this could be a good opportunity to disconnect. I don’t mean abandon your phone and communicating altogether (but hey, a full-on detox never hurt anyone). I mean being present and cutting back on screen-time.

So if you’ve been getting those weekly notifications from Apple (I know I have) saying that “you’re screen-times gone up 18% this week”, maybe you can give disconnecting a shot too.

Disconnect Back Into Reality

Here are some easy ways to begin disconnecting from your phone.

  1. Have a real morning routine. I mean a real morning routine. Get out of bed, shower, brush your teeth, start the coffee. Once you’ve started your day, you’ll feel less inclined to pause to look at your phone for 30 minutes.
  2. Review your weekly screen-time report from Apple and see what apps have got you hooked. This was honestly really interesting for me. I realized that I was underestimating how much time I spent texting, on Instagram, on Snapchat. Time flies when you’re distracted, and the numbers don’t lie.
  3. Delete apps you don’t actually love. If you don’t actually like Twitter or Snapchat, but only keep it so you’re “in the loop”, it’s time to delete it. It doesn’t do anything for you. You shouldn’t keep social media just because everyone else has it. We’re all at the age where we can make decisions for ourselves especially when it comes to our mental wellbeing.
  4. Turn off push notifications. The more reminders you get throughout the day, the more likely you’ll hop on your phone to check them out. The way I’ve set my notifications up is calls and texts still pop up, Instagram notifications are still on (because I don’t get a bunch of notifications unless I personally post something), and everything else is turned off.

Hopefully at least one of these ideas can help you disconnect back into reality. It’s so important to be present, even if you’re just with yourself.

Written by GUADS staff member Toni