You’re Watching Too Much Screen. Here’s How to Snap Out of It

You are abandoning reality and getting obsessed with screens.

After the breakout of the COVID-19, people have just started using too much of their cell phones and laptops.

It’s not bad using too much of cell phone, but it’s not suitable for your life because it cuts you from reality and involves you with virtuality.

As now, all your board meeting and classes are shifted on your laptops and Pcs you spend more time than before watching your screens.

I’ve noticed this with my younger brother — he spends almost 15 hours a day watching a screen, which is kind of dangerous for his mind plus his health.

I know that nothing can be done because you’ve to attend the board meetings and online classes.

But you must realise the risk involved because after doing all these meetings you watch shows on “Netflix ”and scrolls your Instagram, including other social platforms.

All this scrolling is damaging your brain cells and turning you into a screen addict.

People who are attending their board meetings plus getting involved with other people are much better than those who are just scrolling their phones, for nothing entire day.

We’re not alone, exactly, with so many of us going through this. Yet too much scrolling combined with screen addiction could cause significant damage to our mental and physical well being.

According to health experts, this activity can make us angry, anxious, depressed, unproductive, and less satisfied with our loved ones and ourselves.

I don’t have to present proofs regarding this; you only need to study your behaviour also your habits?

How much time you’re spending with screen and how much with the real people — you’ll find that this ratio is quite unstable because your screen time is way more, than the real life.

You are getting happy, sad, angry and seduced only by watching your screen. It’s way more harmful than your imagination. And you are psychologically becoming unstable day by day.

Why?

When you fall in the loop of continues scrolling you forget about everything happening around you — it’s like sleeping with open eyes.

As you know, the human body has a limit of everything in terms of consumption and doing, and when you try to overdo things, your body repels.

In the same way, if you’re watching too much screen, you’ll end up ignoring real people around you; furthermore, all people will sound illogical to you when you talk to them. Why?

Simply because you’re in the illusion of screen and your mind is continuously suggesting you watch more — scroll more videos plus; it’s the infinite hunger and you need to control this before it’s too late.

It’s the path of least resistance to keep consuming passively through social media — said, Dr Vivek Murthy, the former surgeon general, who has written broadly about the impact of loneliness on personal health.

According to him, it’s not just disengaging but also dealing with the impact that has on our mind-set, which often last longer.

We need to get out of this loop of continues watching screen, and for that, we need proper planning.

Plan your day in the morning

We, by nature, information consumers and digital media, social networking plus other addictive content are like digital candy displayed in front of a small kid, who has an obsession for candies.

To resist this information and video consumption, we need a proper plan, similar to how we create a dieting plan to lose extra weight.

First, you need to realise that you’re consuming more than your need — once you know details about your consumption — schedule your day in that way, so that, you get less time for screen consumption.

When I look my day I begin my day at 4 am from meditation, after meditation, I plan many entire days how I need to do things and how much time I am going to give different people, time to my work, plus my entertainment.

To be honest — I hardly get any time for watching videos because I have a lot of work to do plus I have my MA economics studies and classes.

I know this is not the case with everyone, out there — you may be having a lot of free hours for consuming screen.

So what you need to do in that free time?

You need to plan your activities, especially those who don’t have other things to do. Like.

1. Plan your time.
2. Practice yoga and meditation.
3. Connect with others.
4. Spend some time with nature.

It would be best if you fix the time for watching screen use a timer while you are scrolling or watching — like Instagram has a timer which you can set on minimum minutes — up to 30minutes, or as per your need.

I have set mine on 30min, and whenever I reach 30minutes, Instagram sends me a notification, after watching that notification, I close my insta app and move to my books or studies.

I know that if you’re alone, things are quite different for you — but you need to realise that your addiction is making you sick about the screen.

You may have noticed people scrolling their screens while conversations plus during dinner even though there is nothing substantial in their phones. Why?

It’s only happening because they got addicted to the screen and they’re not even aware of that — if you try to tell them, they’ll burst at you or try to ignore your advice.

This is not only their’s problems it is happening with all of us, and we are ignoring that factor — now that we are facing corona crisis everyone is out of jobs, plus they have plenty of time to spend alone.

Instead of using that time for self-progress people are continuously trying to destroying their brain cells and creating conflicts among each other.

You may have heard of the news of mass breakups, divorce, harassment cases, domestic violence, all these are increasing because people are ignoring reality too much.

Those who consume too much screen end up getting impatient in the long run because you shift from videos to videos plus posts to post in seconds — which continually decreasing your patience level.

You don’t need proof for that — because you’re the proof.

What you need to do to avoid loop of scrolling

1. Plan your time

Plan your day and allot time to your activities set the timer for your screen scrolling — I am not suggesting any particular schedule because we all vary in terms of life and using time.

Take regular breaks — before the pandemic things were quite different, your regular lunch break used to be browsing Facebook.

But now, you don’t have that privilege, all your work is shifted to your home at your computer screen, and the web has become a default workplace.

So — Instead of staying glued to screen, take a break to move out of your house, do your laundry, prepare your snacks, grab your bike toll around plus run some laps in the park near your home.

It will reduce your stress level at the same time, boost your immunity level.

2. Practise meditation and Yoga.

Exercises in mindfulness can help us break the cycle of information bingeing plus prevent us from sinking into a dark place altogether.

Being an Indian, I am very much familiar with the Yoga and meditation because I used to have an entire class of 1 hour complete dedicated to Yoga and meditation back in school days because It is compulsory in every Indian school.

So from there, I have got a good grip over my mind and thoughts plus on Yoga and meditation.

Practice this;

1. Take some deep breaths and think about the people you love and care for you or helped you in the past — it can be anyone.
2. While imagining these people, send them your positive wishes. For example:“ may you be happy”, “may you be peaceful”, “may you be safe”, “may you be healthy”.
3. In the next breath while inhaling imagine — you’re a positive being and receiving positive energy inside you — and throwing your negativity out.
4. Practice this regularly, and you notice remarkable changes in your health and mental states.
5. People who are under depression or any other mental illness must practice the aforementioned daily.

It’s the one way to connect to yourself, and to others because people receive our thoughts wherever they are.

Connect with others

Recall your experience of connecting with someone — and underline the experience of spending 15 minutes a day with someone you care about the most — you’ll see it makes you comfortable plus less alone.

But how can we connect with people when we hardly see them? At the beginning of the pandemic, many of us started using video conferencing apps to connect with our friend and loved ones.

Now, more than half a year into the pandemic many are experiencing, “fatigue”.

Dr Murthy said he, too was getting tired of the neck strain because of the constant video calls and had begun shifting many of his work calls to audio calls while taking a walk, which lifts his energy and helped him stay focused.

He also recommends — people try to form a “moai” a Japanese word for social gathering.

This could be small of group of people, your friends and family members, who regularly convene — on a video call or in-person by safe social distancing and agree to look at for one-another.

He has two friends formed a “moai” and once a month they catch up in the frank conversations about personal issues, related to health, finance and relationships.

I personly follows Dr Murthy advice — once a month I call my friends on the phone (audio calls) I don’t like video calls because I’m not too fond of video calls.

On those calls, we share jokes, including our school and college life stories, which fills our minds with joy plus motivate us.

In the same way, you must try this too; it helps you gain a grip over your addictions.

I am very well aware that changing by self is a complicated process, and it takes time, but in my views, you don’t have to change yourself alone take help of your friends and loved one’s because currently — you need them and they need you.

Spend some time with nature

According to the“ Vedic studies” nature replies to you in the same way you behave with nature.

Today almost every one of us destroying nature in all possible ways — hunting too many animals plus we are ignoring climate change crises.

During my 8th class, my school teacher told me that if you ever had a headache just go near to a tree stare the leaves or touch the leaves of a tree spend some time with the tree, and your headache will be gone.

As I am a man of experiments — I never believe anything without experimenting.

So tired this method and it worked for me. And I also studied “Hellen Keller ” had a similar experience with trees.

She was capable of understanding nature whilst she was blind.

“The most pathetic person in the world is some one who has sight but no vision.” ― Helen Keller

This is one of my favourite quote from her work — which clearly describes present human behaviour.

In the same way, we are ignoring nature; at the same time, it’s true potentials that he can lend us if we care for him.

According to recent studies, people who spend more time with nature are less depressed. And they are also healthier than those who keep them away from nature.

Scientist “Louis Kuhne” and many others have written about the natural process of healing. And in the book “Return to nature ” there are so many items which confirm how nature is essential for us.

So — you need to be more conscious about nature, and try to connect with nature, spend some time with your flowers and trees near your home.

Stay blessed and stay safe.