It’s very difficult to limit exposure to screens in the modern world, and for many people, that might not even seem like a problem. However, it’s worth understanding the negative impacts that this constant exposure can have on you – not to force yourself away from pastimes that you enjoy, but so that you can enjoy them in moderation. In order to effectively change your habits, though, you can’t just learn why something might be bad for you; you have to learn the most effective methods for changing your own behavior relating to it.
The Negative Impacts
First, it’s important to understand how your health might be affected by all of this exposure. One of the most straightforward detriments that you might be experiencing could be simply in relation to your eye health – staring at screens all day for work, looking at your phone during your break and then coming home to look at a TV might be how some people live, and that’s inevitably going to take a toll on your eyes. Knowing this can help you to purposefully look away from your screen more and find opportunities throughout the day to put down a screen when you’re able to.
However, more pressing than that for many people might be the mental health impacts that come with so much screentime. This might be especially prominent when it comes to phone and social media usage, and how near-endless access to streams of information can lead to conditions like anxiety and depression.
First Steps
Getting started can be the hardest part, but it’s important to remember that any progress is good progress. When you can see your screentime through your phone’s digital wellbeing settings, you have a way of monitoring your progress – perhaps even setting targets for yourself to fall below a certain threshold. Basic steps like moving your phone further away from you or putting an elastic band around it to make it harder to access as readily.
It can also be helpful to try and focus your screentime on specific activities to avoid aimless scrolling. For example, if you play games through platforms like CrazyVegas casino, making sure that you stick to a pre-determined time window (like half an hour) can help you to play the games you like without going overboard on screentime.
Finding Alternatives
The tricky thing for many people can be finding something to do with all of this new free time that you have now that you’re not looking at screens. What’s important to remember is that you don’t have to do anything at all, and sometimes it’s beneficial to just focus on one activity at a time, and becoming more invested in mundane activities can help you to appreciate everyday aspects of your life. It doesn’t all have to be mundane, however; it can also be a good opportunity to get into arts and crafts, as this can prove to be an expressive and therapeutic way of spending your evenings.