Books to Help You Break Your Phone Addiction
“Dear Phone,
I still remember the first time we met. You were an expensive new gadget available only through AT&T; I was a person who could recite her best friends’ phone numbers from memory. When you were launched, I’ll admit that your touch screen caught my eye. But I was too busy trying to type a text message on my flip phone to start something new.
Then I held you in my hand, and things started moving fast.
We’re inseparable now, you and I. You’re the last thing I touch before I go to bed and the first thing I reach for in the morning. You remember my doctors’ appointments, my shopping lists, and my anniversary. . . .
I can’t count the times we’ve gone to bed together and I’ve had to pinch myself to see if I’m dreaming—and believe me, I want to be dreaming, because ever since we met, something seems to be messing with my sleep. . . Thanks to you, I never need to worry about being alone. Any time I’m anxious or upset, you offer a game or newsfeed or viral panda video to distract me from my feelings. And how about boredom? Just a few years ago, I’d often find myself with no way to pass the time other than to daydream, or maybe think. . .
These days, I can’t even remember the last time I was bored. Then again, I can’t remember a lot of things. Like, for example, the last time my friends and I made it through a meal without anyone pulling out a phone. Or how it felt to read an entire magazine article in one sitting. Or what I said in the paragraph above this one. Or whose text I was looking at right before I walked into that pole. Or whatever.
My point is, I feel like I can’t live without you.
And that’s why it’s so hard for me to tell you that we need to break up.”
💛 me
That’s an excerpt from the letter Catherine Price wrote to her smartphone in the introduction to her book How to Break Up With Your Phone: The 30-Day Plan to Take Back Your Life.
My guess is you can relate. I know I can. We love these computers in our pockets, on our wrists, in our earbuds. We love the way they connect us to friends and family, and we love that we can be connected now nearly all the time in a variety of ways.
But the reality is, our phones haven’t just changed the way we communicate with each other, they’ve changed the world so rapidly that now almost every one of us has developed habits that are detrimental to our mental health and personal growth.
In other words. . .
It’s not your fault you’re so anxious all the time; it’s your phone’s fault.
I know it’s uncomfortable to think about, but hear me out—Is it really healthy to fill every extra moment in our lives with an ever-changing screen? Is it really healthy to constantly compare ourselves with carefully curated images day after day after day? Is it really okay to train our brains to distract us to such an extent that we can’t find 10 minutes a day to read a real book?
Since May is Mental Health Awareness month, I thought this would be a good time to talk about it. Because even though I’ve set my own strong boundaries around phones, they’re still a problem in my house. And I’m not just talking about my teenagers’ relationship with YouTube or certain people I love who tend to browse Reddit a lot. Embarrassingly enough, my own phone still shows up in my hand way too often when I’m feeling uncomfortable or nervous about something, or you know, randomly when I’m headed into the bathroom. And the more and more I work on this, the more I’m discovering —
The very best thing we can do for our mental health & personal growth is to break up with our phones.
Don’t get me wrong — I’m not saying you should swear off technology completely and isolate/insulate yourself from the world in a cabin in the woods (unless you’re into that, of course, and if you are, I say go for it). I’m only encouraging you to give yourself a chance to stop and think for a minute.
To imagine a day when you’re able to give yourself space and time for the very best things — the things not on a little screen in your back pocket or on your wrist.
The moments and people we so often miss altogether because of those little screens.
To imagine a different kind of relationship with your phone — one that doesn’t cause anxiety and depression and doesn’t result in our kids growing into teenagers with phone addiction problems or dinners spent out with a partner where we both stare at our phones in uncomfortable silence.
Still, it’s uncomfortable to think about.
I get it.
Here are a few ways to start thinking about it⤵⤵⤵
Get creeped out by how phone designers and social media moguls use “Brain Hacking” to get us to stay addicted to our phones as explained in this Anderson Cooper interview.
You can skip to 8:48 for how our phones keep us in a continual state of anxiety.
Get curious about how people have been warning us about this for decades, even when television was the latest technology, with Neil Postman’s shockingly prophetic book from the 80s Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business.
Gain a million more insights into how our phones are fueling the mental health crisis (both personally and on a societal scale) and how we can take our lives back in Catherine Price’s book How to Break Up With Your Phone: The 30-Day Plan to Take Back Your Life.
Or how about. . .
Send an email to someone about your own phone boundaries, why you think they are (or aren’t) important, and how you keep yourself in check to make sure your phone isn’t running (or ruining) your life. You can email me—I’d love to hear about it. (& don’t worry, I won’t see your email on my phone because I only do email on my computer, which means you won’t be interrupting me, and also means my responses aren’t usually immediate)
For something to do post-breakup, I recommend reading ⤵⤵⤵
No Such Thing as Bad Weather: A Scandinavian Mom’s Secrets for Raising Healthy, Resilient, and Confident Kids (from Friluftsliv to Hygge) by Linda McGurk
Diary of a Young Naturalist by Dara McAnulty
The Lost Art of Reading Nature’s Signs by Tristan Gooley
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (a WWII novel I’m reading & loving)
& of course, the two books I mentioned above: How to Break Up With Your Phone: The 30-Day Plan to Take Back Your Life by Catherine Price & Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. by Neil Postman
& Remember — all of us are still trying to figure this out.
None of us has all the answers, and we’re all dealing with so many things no one else will ever know, so much that will never fit into any box we share with the world. There’s no need to feel guilty or beat yourself up about where you are or what you’re struggling with. There’s absolutely a path forward. I’m honored that you’re here allowing me to share what I know. I hope it helps.