You, your mobile, and your relationship with it

[Chris_K]

Hey all,

Just a bit of off-topic discussion I hoped to kick-start, based on a new focus that mobile vendors seem to have had for the past few months, and thinking about my own relationship with my mobile.

Digital Health
This is the new trend and focus I mentioned above. On Apple devices this is called Screen Time, where iOS will give you real-time reports on how you’re using your device, and give you ways to manage it. Android users aren’t missing out either, as Google have created their own Digital Wellbeing tool, intended to give access to similar reports and management options.

The problem with these tools are that they’re entirely optional, and rightfully so – but if you never look at these or enable any kind of time management or reporting, you’ll never know. I think for many of us, we’d probably be pretty shocked at just how much time we spend on our mobiles… And that’s my question to you all…

Is using your mobile ‘too much’ a bad thing?
I’m in split minds. I do *everything* on my mobile – weekly grocery shopping, keeping in touch with friends and family, photography, gaming, entertainment, alarms, calendars, notebook. I won’t lie, I would be completely lost without my phone so I realise and understand I do have a bit of a dependency issue when it comes to my mobile – and I’ll bet it’ll be the same for all of us. That, in itself, I don’t believe is that much of an issue… The way the world is moving, it seems like more and more of us are communicating with or via machines/computers, and less with real humans, so over time (decades or generations) will we start losing our social and non-digital communication skills?

Bad habits, or just part of modern life?
If I wake up in the middle of the night, I like to think it’s just because I had too much water before bed and I need to “get to business”, but more often than not I tend to spend 2 minutes quickly scanning notifications on my phone before going back to bed. But am I waking up sometimes because I *need* to go for a pee, or is there something deep in my conscious where really, I’m waking myself up to check my phone?

Final thoughts, and some digital health suggestions
If I could sum up the experience I have with my mobile, it would be this: “Ultra convenience at my fingertips, with distractions everywhere”. As I said earlier, I do everything on my phone – heck, nearly all of my purchases made in physical shops is done via contactless, because why fumble about getting the card out of my wallet when I can just tap my phone? But all that convenience comes at a cost; A cost that I can live with and make peace with, but I do think there’s some things we can do to try and improve our relationship with our mobiles.

Enable screen-time or digital health. Check it maybe once a week to get an idea of how you’re using your mobile, for what, and how long – If it shocks you, it probably tells you you’re on it too much, and it may make you think about limiting yourself somewhat, or at certain times of the day.

Night time routines. Put it down screen first and out of sight – that way potential distractions if you happen to wake up should be minimised. This will work best if you enable do not disturb mode… I have mine on a schedule, activating every weekday at 10pm, and turning off at 7am.

Create backups of your phone/data. I think part of my dependency on my phone could be the horror idea of losing it – and all my data. So I’m thinking that by creating regular backups, saving my photo memories to the cloud etc, it will lessen that fear of ‘losing everything’, and thus improve the me/phone relationship.

What’s your phone/you relationship like, and do you have any tips or thoughts of your own for improving it?

[Anonymous]

To directly answer the question, I tend to read the news on my phone at lunchtime but carry one because it's useful to have a phone so I can make and receive calls.

I have rarely forgotten it when going to work but if I do it doesn't really ruin my day as it would a lot of people.

[TallTrees]

Thank you @Anonymous 

Actually I was quite often in Detention

[BOSSGOGG]

I use mine a lot.
Too much? That's the question.
I buy the best as I use it to the full. It definitely helps my life as a tool.

I can step away from it quite easily. I don't check it during the night or anything like that.

I do like the idea of the zen mode on recent oneplus devices. Can't be overridden and only accepts phones calls from your emergency contacts for 30 mins and that's it.