On a whim I picked up the book “How To Break Up With Your Phone.” It was on the new book shelf at the library and I thought I’d thumb through it just for laughs. It turns out, the book is really good.  As I read through the first half of the book I slowly realized that I am, indeed, addicted to my phone (as most everyone probably is these days). I decided I’d give the author’s 30 day plan to “break up with your phone” a try. Let’s just call it an experiment. To see what happens. To see how it affects my mental state and general mood.

I am on day 8 today and I already feel like a new person.

About 3 days in she instructs her readers to delete all social media from the phone. Don’t even think twice, just delete.

You know how when you pull a band-aid off and you know it’s best to just yank it off as fast as you can and it stings badly for a few moments but then it’s all fine? That’s how it felt the first day I deleted everything. I felt this moment of panic and then a sense of emptiness and then I realized that I would be OK. Deleting social media from my phone didn’t kill me.

She doesn’t say to, necessarily, delete social media from your life. Just delete it from you phone. So I’ve been checking in on Facebook/Instagram/Twitter a couple of times a day from my PC.

I also downloaded an app that monitors how much time I spend on my phone and can figure out how many minutes/hours I’ve spent on specific apps. The app is called Moment for those interested. The day I installed the app it stated I had spent 4 hours on my phone that day! And that was just from “momentarily” checking social media to fill in the empty spaces during the day. Four hours!

So now I have a 4 hour void to fill every day. It’s kind of nice! To start, I’ve been catching up on things I’ve neglected, like editing photos, and blogging. I actually read for an hour everyday last week. I organized my closet and books yesterday.

But I think the best thing so far is that I feel so much better mentally! As the book states, when we scroll through our endless feeds we experience a plethora of emotions as we see posts from different people. As a one of those Highly Sensitive types, this was making me insane. Today I feel less insane.