The Holiday Guide to maintaining healthy smartphone use
Practical tips to find digital balance during the holiday season
It’s late December and the year is coming to an end. Time to cross items off this year’s bucket list. “Begin a blog post with a quote” is one of them. And here it comes:
“Taking a break can lead to breakthroughs.” ― Russell Eric Dobda
For large parts of the world, the holiday season begins. The time of the year where we all like to calm down, reflect on the past year, make new year’s resolutions and spend time with our loved ones.
What also happens during the holiday season: our screen time goes up. And there’s nothing wrong with spending more time on your screen during the off-season. But your screen can stand between you and calm holidays, leading to more stress, anxiety and sleep deprivation.
If you want to find a healthy digital balance in your holidays, here are three tips that might be helpful.
1. Be gentle to yourself
First things first: lift those heavy expectations and feelings off your shoulders. You don’t have to do a digital break for the next 7 days because everybody else talks about doing it. And you don’t have to feel bad or guilty because you’re spending time in front of your screens.
It’s totally okay to give in to digital escapism and relax in virtual realities, especially in times where travel in the real world is so limited. If you’re not able to connect with loved ones physically, your phone can help to meet in the digital world. Check-in with friends and family that can not spend Christmas in their traditional setting.
You know what’s best for you. Follow your impulses and scroll through Instagram, watch that Netflix series or documentary on YouTube if you want.
There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s getting uncomfortable when you’re losing control over your screen time, when the algorithms of TikTok, Instagram or YouTube take over making it super hard for you to not continue watching, continue scrolling.
There’s a solution to that to help you be in control. They’re called stopping cues. A self-set stopping cue marks the end of a time frame in which we allow ourselves to follow our impulses.
You can use different stopping cues:
- Time: I’ll spend 15 minutes on Instagram → set the timer as a reminder.
- Numbers: I’ll watch 2 videos on YouTube.
- Situations: I’ll scroll through Twitter while my tea is getting ready.
That way, you can lose yourself without losing control.
Takeaway: Be gentle with yourself. Do what feels best for you. If screen time is involved, that’s fine. Make sure to maintain control with stopping cues.
2. Make good phone plans and stick to them
Mike Tyson once said: “Everyone has a plan ‘till they get punched in the mouth.”
Well, this might be true for a boxing fight. But in our everyday life, there are ways to make plans that we can stick to even in critical situations.
The difficult emotions come up when you’re being ‘half online and half offline’, meaning online while other people are psychically around you. This is the situation that leads to frustration, conflicts and lower perceived closeness and quality of relationships. And ultimately to the feeling of guilt.
The solution is: very concrete planning of times and situations when you want to use your phone to connect with others, and when you want to be fully present with your environment — ideally synched with your holiday group.
So how do you make a good plan and stick to it? By reflecting on potential high risk moments and designing specific strategies to cope with them. In health psychology, this is called Coping Planning.
A good plan consists of three things:
- Anticipation of a (maybe) critical situation (e.g. hanging out post-dinner, Christmas morning after waking up)
- A coping strategy using the if-then-method (if the critical situation happens, I will do this)
- The belief that you can be successful (this is called self-efficacy, and it’s the foundation of successful plans)
That’s it. Now block out a couple of minutes to make healthy phone plans for your holidays.
Takeaway: Make a holiday plan for yourself. Answer the following questions:
- In which situations is it okay to use my phone?
- In which not?
- What are high-risk situations? Plan individual if-then-strategies for them.
3. Unplug for a day (spoiler: a coloring tip is involved)
Yes, we know. We’re standing up for a better time spent on the phone instead of less time. A healthy relationship to technology is in the center of our work. And a good relationship needs balance.
We spent most of 2020 in front of our screens. Because a lot of our professional, but also private life moved online. Tech did an awesome job in keeping our lives going. And the holidays might be the first occasion for some families to see each other in person for a long time. Going offline for a day or two might help to fully connect with your loved ones — especially if you’re lucky enough to see your family and friends.
It might feel difficult in the beginning. You can prepare yourself for your unplug day(s). For example, tell your friends and family that you’ll not be reachable for a given amount of time. And even better: update the profile picture of the messaging app of your choice stating ‘Back online on the DD/MM’ (inspired by Rebecca from Tech Life Balance).
If a full day feels like too much, define GO and NO GO times in which you don’t touch your phone. For yourself, or for the group you’re with.
It’s going to feel like holidays. And might be more fun if you do it with the people you spend the holidays with.
And here’s a little nugget
Coloring can help soothe the mind, reducing the racing thoughts of stress and anxiety. A fulfilling activity for an off-day. We created printable coloring sheets. You can download them here for free.
Feel free to share your designs with us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook :)
Takeaway: plan to go offline, inform your loved ones and then do it. Enjoy. And come back refreshed.
We hope you now feel well equipped with actionable tips to find the digital balance that supports you in your holiday plans, whatever they might be.
Have a lovely time and take care of yourself.
