Life Kit - Screen Time Overload? Here's How To Find Balance

Episode Date: April 30, 2020

Screens keep us connected while we're socially distant, but phone fatigue is real. It's important to take breaks from your device to destress. In this episode, expert advice for balancing screen time during quarantine.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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a short anonymous survey at npr.org slash podcast survey, one word. It takes less than 10 minutes and it really helps support the show. That's npr.org slash podcast survey. One word. Hi, my name is Peter Rapolo. And my tip is, since I've been spending a lot of time at home, I've been thinking about the people in my life who needed to have a little bit of encouragement or a bright spot in their day. My sister-in-law takes care of our kids. And I'm thinking about sending her a note or some flowers. She really needs some encouragement and I think she'd enjoy that.

So while I have this extra time, I'm using it to think about other people and what I can do for them and helping them to make their day a little better. Thank you and have a great day. I'm Anya Kamenetz and this is NPR's Life Kit. We're all using screens more than ever now. Zoom happy hours, FaceTime playdates, virtual workouts. It's great to be able to stay connected, but it's so easy to feel the burnout

too. We're not just heads sitting on bodies. We have a whole body that needs to be taken care of as well. And it's important to take breaks from our screens once in a while. So we checked in with Catherine Price. She's the author of How to Break Up with Your Phone. And she's offering resources for finding a healthier balance with screens right now. And she says one way to start is to recognize that we use our screens for lots of different things. So recognizing that there's certain types of screen time that is necessary right now for our work as adults. There's certain types of screen time that is necessary right now for our work as adults. There's certain types of screen time that we're using to entertain ourselves.

There's device use that's geared towards helping us connect with other people. But the most important thing, she says, is the quality of the screen time. Once you start thinking about it more as a question of quality rather than quantity, I think it takes some of the artificial pressure off of just to feel bad and restrict things for the sake of restriction. So in this episode, we're going to help you think through what kind of phone use helps you cope during these uncertain times, and what kind of use is really just piling on the stress, and how to create a little more balance when it comes to screen time, even during quarantine.

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We don't know, but we're making some fun, bold predictions for the new year. Listen now to the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast from NPR. Hey, Katherine, how are you? I'm doing pretty well, all things considered. How are you? Yes, COVID adjusted fine. So how do you distinguish for yourself between what's useful and helping me cope versus what's over the top. I think for me, it might be more of a difference of degree than a difference of kind, because I like to feel like

I'm informed. But then there's definitely a point in that scroll where you are over informed. So how do you spot that for yourself? So I always recommend to people that they try to gently get into the habit of cultivating moment to moment awareness of how they feel while they're on the screen. If you've got that device in your pocket, it's very easy to access, for example, every news app in the universe. So instead of carrying your phone in your pocket all the time, maybe create a charging station for your phone somewhere nearby, but not within arm's reach. And maybe, for example, if you're having issues with compulsively checking before bed, maybe get your phone out of your bedroom and put a book on your bedside table instead if you've identified that you'd like to read books and that makes you feel calmer.

Put some kind of craft project or a puzzle out on your table so that when you do have a down moment, you have some option that's really easy to get to that's not your phone. And I'm not saying that phones are inherently bad, but just in many cases these days, our phones are direct portals into the news and the news is extremely stressful. Make it easy for yourself and reduce the ease of access to the substances or devices that you're trying to reduce your usage of. My phone is not only a conduit to the news, but it's also a conduit to every single person I care about who's not in my house with me. And so how do you regulate that access?

So just as screen time's not all the same, the uses of our phone are not all the same. Our phones are, well, going with the food on you. It's like a little refrigerator that has all sorts of different types of apps in it. And some of those apps are going to be beneficial and some of them are not. So as I know, you certainly would agree when we think about our phone is just one like a lump object. It's really not the right way to think about it. We should be thinking about what is in our phone. So I would say you take the exact same approach to your phone as you do with your offline life. And so just to give an example, if you recognize that using your phone to actually call friends is making you feel great, well, then you want to have the actual phone icon

in the bottom of your menu bar, which we're probably is already. If you realize that taking pictures of like, I don't know, I've been taking a lot of pictures about of trees in bloom recently, and I like doing that. So I'm keeping my camera on there. I want to use my phone, as you alluded to, to connect with people or to do things that I actually enjoy. But for most people, social media is maybe making them feel connected in a small dose, but bad afterwards. So maybe you don't want to have social media on your home screen. Maybe you want to delete it entirely and then just reinstall it when you actually want to check. And that's going to help you reduce the number of mindless scrolls that you get sucked into. One wrinkle that I wanted to add to that, when you talk about using your phone to

connect with other people, I agree with you generally, that feels pretty life affirming. And yet, there's a lot of people in my network who are also quite anxious. And so I feel torn between becoming available, being available to them when they need me and getting locked into someone's kind of like anxiety spiral. So how do you calibrate your own availability and your own sanity? Two things. I think that this goes back to the idea of monitoring how certain activities and interactions make you feel in as real time as possible.

And if you notice that every time you talk to your sister or something, you feel bad, or you feel more anxious, well, then you've got two options, either reduce the number of interactions you have with her, or have a conversation about exactly that, you know, that this is making your own anxiety worse. And while you know, it's hard, would it be possible for you, the two of you to try to talk about something else when you connect? I think communication is really important. I also think it's really important to recognize that even though it's wonderful to connect with people during this time using the tools that are available to us, it also can get to be too much, even if the other person isn't particularly anxious. I mean, I find that my past couple

of weeks, my Zoom schedule is so packed. And after a certain point, it's like, I think I just need a little bit of quiet time where I'm not connected to anyone or anything. It's especially important during this time to consider giving ourselves breaks because it's easy to burn out on connection even when it's good. Yeah, that's a really big point. I think people need different amounts of connection and you have to kind of calibrate. Even though it's virtual,

it doesn't mean it doesn't take the same amount out of you, especially if it's a video call. Yeah, I think it works both ways, right? It's surprising how nourishing and good it can feel to connect over a video call or over the phone. But at the same time, it's interesting to realize how wearing it can be to connect with people this way, because you start to become really, really grateful for the lack of

lag time and face-to-face interactions. So it makes me grateful for real-life interaction, in addition to being grateful for technological connection. When talking about this idea of Zoom fatigue, do you have parameters? One thing I'm starting to think about is, you know, trying to decide when to switch off my video and just have an audio conversation or even walking and talking. I had a friend who mentioned that she is taking social phone calls like around 5 or 6 p.m. every night while she walks around, which I thought was a really nice approach.

What do you think about that? I think that we definitely need to be aware of our own fatigue when it comes to things like Zoom calls. And I also think, as I believe is true for all of this, we need to come at this from an individualized approach. So don't feel that you need to come up with a schedule that's the same as everybody else, or even that you're going to have the same needs day to day. I think that in general, it's very helpful to experiment with taking breaks from your devices, ideally full breaks, just to see how that feels, as you might find it to be more restorative than you realized and more necessary than you

realized. For example, something that my husband and I have been doing is really trying to get into the digital Sabbath idea where we take an evening a week where we actually do not schedule Zoom calls and we light a candle at dinner and we turn off our screens and we keep them off until the following morning. People can customize that as they want. You could have your phone on do not disturb but allow calls from important people to come through if you feel anxious about that. But I find in general that just having a ritual where I know that I can not be on call to anything feels really good sometimes and I want to give myself that opportunity. So you're really encouraging people to think of this break as self care and not as some productivity game that they're imposing on

themselves, right? I think we shouldn't be imposing more things on ourself now. And I would also say, is that ever really the best approach? I feel like there's all these shoulds that we always put on ourselves instead of saying what is right for us, what is going to make us happy and productive people, people who are not just nervous wrecks all the time during this stressful period. And for some people, that might mean that they want to binge on Netflix every night. And that's what makes them feel good. For other people, they might rather do a Zoom happy hour or for another person, they might want to turn off their screens and read a book. For some people, they're just surviving right now, whether it's emotionally or financially.

And the idea of adding anything else to their plate is just out of the question. But also, maybe we do develop habits or rituals or practices that are useful now that we can take with us going forward. It's a time to really look at your own screen habits and that of your family and the other people in your life and try to figure out what you actually want your boundaries and routines to look like with your devices. In many cases, we haven't even stopped to think about that before because we've been so busy with all this other stuff. So maybe now there's an opportunity to actually look at that and make some small changes that will make you feel better in the moment and that you can take with you.

But maybe you just want to survive and that's fine too. Now it's time for the recap. First of all, when you plug in, tune in. Take note of how you're feeling while you're using your phone. The next thing Catherine says is to set up your environment for success. You know, put a book on your bedside table or set out a puzzle or crafting supplies if you don't want to always reach for your phone. Remember, all screen time is not the same. So set up your home screen so you reach for the apps that make you feel better, not worse.

Like the camera to take pictures. Zoom fatigue is a real thing. So give yourself breaks, even from virtual connection. You could even try a full digital Sabbath like Catherine does and turn all your screens off for a night. For more episodes of LifeKit, go to npr.org slash lifekit. We have episodes on all sorts of topics, from how to file for unemployment to how to start a garden. If you love Life Kit and want even more, subscribe to our newsletter at npr.org slash Life Kit newsletter. Plus, we want to hear from you. What are your tips? How are you coping right now? Leave us a voicemail at 202-216-9823 or email us at lifekit at npr.org. This episode was produced by Claire Schneider.

Megan Cain is the managing producer, and Beth Donovan is our senior editor. I'm Anya Kamenetz. Thanks for listening. Hey, it's Guy Raz from NPR's How I Built This, and each week on the show during this unprecedented crisis, I'll be asking some of the top founders and builders how they're dealing with the economic impact of the coronavirus and hear about some of the ways they're pivoting to fight it.

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